Crises caused by war, migration and how the church can respond prompt debate at congress

The first two days of presentations of the 53rd International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador, contrasted the hardships currently faced by many people in different parts of the world with the prophetic responses that the church can provide in times of crisis.

Speakers at the Sept. 8-15 event, coming from various nations, shared their views on the tough realities for millions of people nowadays, from the innocent victims of the war in Ukraine to the immigrant families who take treacherous journeys from South America to the United States and end up finding more exclusion and violence.

In his presentation, Rodrigo Guerra, lay secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, summarized most of the current "wounds of the world," as the organizers of the congress have been calling the social problems that can be healed by the sense of fraternity provided by the Eucharist.

He mentioned social inequality and the widening gap between the rich and the poor, something that rings an especially alarming bell in Latin America; the lack of care for the Earth, with all the ecological consequences; and the nonexistence of fraternity and forgiveness when it comes to political disagreements.

"Many of our countries are torn apart by tremendous polarizations due to serious ideological opposition," Guerra told the audience, adding that populism — both on the right and on the left — is the undesirable result of those social rifts.

He also named mass immigration — and the absence of an adequate reception by the countries of destination — as one of the most complex challenges of the current time.

Leyden Rovelo-Krull, who heads the Office of Hispanic Ministry of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, shared her experience working with immigrants who have just been released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a long trip from South or Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border.

She recalled that in 1983 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops affirmed that the Hispanic and Latino presence in the U.S. eccesial life was "God's blessing for the church and for our country," given that those immigrants had been revitalizing parishes all over the nation.

Despite that, a high proportion of U.S. citizens have been expressing their opposition to the arrival of Latin American immigrants, including Catholic churchgoers.

Rovelo-Krull described the sufferings of some of the people she has met during her work, like a mother who lost her 5-year-old daughter as she was crossing Central America and had to bury her on the way — at a point she doesn't know exactly where it is.

The trauma of so many immigrant families may be comparable to those of the victims of the Russian invasion to Ukraine, vividly described by Auxiliary Bishop Hryhoriy Komar of the Catholic Eparchy of Sambir-Drohobych, a city near the border with Poland. He told the audience that at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been kidnapped by Russian occupiers.