Cardinal joins fight for undocumented workers' rights
Apr 06, 2006
One day, Roger Mahony, then about 12 years old, was working in his father's poultry processing plant in the San Fernando Valley when law enforcement agents searching for undocumented immigrants raided the facility.
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(Washington Post, April 3, 2006) LOS ANGELES -- ''I will never forget them bursting through the doors," Mahony recalled. ''I was terrified by it. And I thought, these poor people; they're here making a living supporting their families. . . . It had a very deep impact on me throughout the years."
Now Cardinal Roger Mahony, he leads the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. It is the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the country, and Mahony recently placed himself and the church in the national debate on immigration.
On March 1, during Ash Wednesday Mass, Mahony attacked a House bill that would turn most people and institutions that aid undocumented immigrants into felons. Calling it ''blameful, vicious" legislation, he vowed a campaign of civil disobedience in the archdiocese's 288 parishes if it becomes law.
Protest organizers and participants credited Mahony's fire from the pulpit -- and the educational campaign he initiated in January throughout his archdiocese -- with playing a critical role in organizing opposition.
They say his efforts helped prompt half a million people, including many undocumented immigrants, to feel safe enough to participate in one of the biggest demonstrations ever in downtown Los Angeles in March, calling for a more liberal immigration bill.
Los Angeles was one of more than a dozen cities in which demonstrators coursed through the streets. Earlier last week, a Senate committee approved an alternative measure with a guest-worker program that would help many illegal immigrants eventually win permanent residency or even US citizenship. ''I think this is a good beginning, but we are not stopping now," Mahony said in an interview.
Mahony became archbishop in 1985. Much of his religious career has been devoted to Hispanic migrants and the civic activism he countenanced last month. In the early 1960s, Mahony attended a seminary near citrus farms in the San Fernando Valley.
He honed his Spanish by practicing with fruit pickers brought to the United States on the ''bracero" guest-worker program that ended in 1964, in part because the workers were exploited ruthlessly.
A year after Mahony became a priest in Fresno in 1964, Filipino and Mexican farm workers launched the Delano Grape Strike, leading to the formation of the United Farm Workers and elevating labor leader Cesar Chavez to international prominence. At the time, no government agency claimed jurisdiction over agricultural workers.
From the start of the strike, Mahony worked on the Bishop's Committee on Farm Labor and mediated between strikers and farm owners. In 1975, Jerry Brown, then governor, appointed Mahony as the first chairman of the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board.
''For many, many years he has been totally involved in so many ways trying to give attention to the Hispanic community," said the Rev. Anastasio ''Tacho" Rivera, who ran the Spanish ministry section of the archdiocese for years.
Cardinal joins fight for undocumented workers' rights