This is how Sr. Norma Pimental, MJ, began a TED talk: “In 2014, I visited a detention facility where hundreds of little children, immigrant children, were detained for several weeks in conditions that were very heartbreaking. They were dirty and muddy and crying. Their faces were full of tears. I had the opportunity to go in and be with them. And they were all around me. They were little ones, some of them not older than five years old. And they were saying to me, ‘Get me out of here. Please, help me.’ It was so difficult to be there with them. I started to cry with them, and I told them, ‘Let us pray.’ And they repeated after me, ‘God, please, help us.’ As we prayed, I could see the Border Patrol officers looking through a glass window. They were on the verge of tears, as they heard the children praying. A little boy came closer and told me, ‘Please, help me. I want to be with my mother. She was here, I was separated from her.’ When I walked out of the cell, an officer got close to me and said to me, ‘Sister, thank you. You have helped us realize that they too are human beings.’”
Sr Norma Pimentel, who belongs to the Missionaries of Jesus Congregation, has been for many years the Executive Director of Catholic Charities, the charitable arm of the Diocese of Brownsville in Texas, U.S. In 2014 thousands of families tried desperately to leave their countries in Central America and seek asylum in the U.S. Responding to this crisis, she set up Humanitarian Respite Centers, where hundreds of American volunteers took care of these poor and hungry asylum seekers. These efforts brought Sr Pimentel worldwide recognition. In March 2015, Pimentel spoke at the U.N. Headquarters in New York City. During the Papal visit to the U.S. that year, Sr Pimentel met Pope Francis in New York City and presented him with one of her original paintings of an immigrant mother and child. Before coming to work for Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, Pimentel was one of the leaders who directed Casa Oscar Romero, a refugee shelter that served Central Americans fleeing their war-torn countries in the 1980s. The shelter provided emergency relief and temporary housing for hundreds of thousands of refugees. It is there that she developed a passion for helping refugees and asylum seekers.
Fr M.A. Joe Antony SJ
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