Vatican-backed priest tours US to visit immigrant advocates, community organizers

(RNS) — When the news broke that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo had been shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent as he drove his construction crew to work in Houston last week, a Vatican representative was meeting with immigrant families at a Houston Catholic parish. The families were sharing about the intense levels of fear their community has been experiencing.

“This is completely terrible, and we cannot be silent in front of this,” the Rev. Mattia Ferrari, coordinator of World Meeting of Popular Movements, told RNS about the killing of Salgado Araujo.

On his multi-city tour of the U.S., Ferrari has heard from many immigrants experiencing fear, family separation and even detention. “They are suffering something that is completely unfair, completely unjust,” Ferrari said, calling Salgado Araujo’s death “the top of the sufferings.”

The World Meeting of Popular Movements was first convened at the Vatican with Pope Francis in 2014, and since then the Vatican’s Dicastery for Integral Human Development has “accompanied” the initiative, which emphasizes poor and marginalized people as “protagonists” in the fight for justice.

“ We are here to serve, not to lead,”…