Pope Francis greets Silvia Camacho, a leader with San Juan Diego Catholic Church in Montana Vista, in a 2022 meeting at the Vatican. (Photo courtesy of Rabbi John Linder)
[Originally published in El Paso Matters]
Father Pablo Matta was just a young seminarian when he attended an El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization (EPISO) meeting at Santa Lucia Catholic Church (now St. John Paul II) in 1985. At the meeting, local leaders were gearing up for a big fight – thousands of people in the colonias of El Paso had been sold parcels of land with the promise of utility services – water, sewer and gas – only to learn that they had been swindled by unscrupulous developers.
That early meeting turned into a decades-long movement by EPISO/Border Interfaith to bring water and sewerage to tens of thousands of people in communities like Montana Vista, Canutillo, Socorro and Sparks. The efforts of early, brave leaders changed the lives of El Pasoans and added hundreds of millions of dollars to the El Paso economy, much more if the multipliers of new housing, schools and businesses are added to the equation.
The organizing also changed Father Matta and fundamentally shaped the way he pastored to his people. Father Matta has been a leader for more than 40 years with EPISO/Border Interfaith, a grassroots organization dedicated to forming leaders from diverse institutions in the habits of public life.
In 2006, when a flood devastated Canutillo, he and his congregation worked tirelessly through EPISO/Border Interfaith to bring relief to those who had lost their homes, livelihood or their loved ones.
Last year, Father Matta joined a delegation of 18 leaders and organizers from across the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation – the broad-based organizing network to which EPISO/Border Interfaith belongs – on an extraordinary visit with Pope Francis.
“Pope Francis confirmed what we have been living and working on all along. We were lifting up the person who had been ignored. Change requires friction. Standing with the most vulnerable, with those with the least power will not always be popular. But what I learned from the pope is that we are on the right track,” Father Matta said.
Pope Francis greets Father Pablo Matta of El Paso in 2024. (Photo courtesy of EPISO/Border Interfaith)
This was the third meeting our organizing network had with Pope Francis between 2022 and 2024, each meeting the result of an invitation from the pope himself. At all three visits, a leader from EPISO/Border Interfaith was present – Silvia Camacho, Father Ivan Montelongo and Father Pablo Matta.
In 90-minute conversations at his residence at the Casa Santa Marta, the pope put his guests at ease through his humor and genuine curiosity about the work of our network, and how interfaith organizations like EPISO/Border Interfaith had endured over so much time.
He listened as Camacho spoke of her work with San Juan Diego Catholic Church in Montana Vista.
“Hombres y mujeres así son los que hacen la historia. No se conforman con los límites. Seguramente los habrán criticado mucho. Pero la gente escucha la crítica, porque es humilde, y va adelante,” the pontiff said.
(“Men and women like these are those who make history. They don’t conform to limits. Surely they have been criticized a lot. But the people listen to the criticism, as humbly as they can, and they keep moving forward.”)
Pope Francis jokes about his bad knee during a 2022 meeting with representatives from the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation. El Paso's Silvia Camacho is third from right. (Photo courtesy of Rabbi John Linder)
The simple act of listening to people on the margins, and what Pope Francis taught about it, may well become one of his enduring legacies. Through the practice of synodality, Pope Francis wanted to re-establish a practice of listening across the global church.
In 2022, EPISO/BI and the Diocese of El Paso worked together to train over 300 parishioners from 40-plus institutions to carry out the synod in El Paso and West Texas, using the format of “house meetings,” as a model for the church to listen closely to the experiences of individuals and families, particularly those excluded or on the margins.
In a recent podcast, Bishop Mark Seitz said the synod is not just another “project” that must be completed and we “get back to our life.”
“We can’t just do things from the top down,” Bishop Seitz said. “The Holy Spirit wants to make the whole people of God a priestly people, and that means that everyone is involved.”
During the Industrial Areas Foundation papal visit in 2023, Father Montelongo represented EPISO/Border Interfaith and the Catholic Diocese of El Paso. He shared with the pope more about our collaboration on the diocesan phase of the synod. Father Montelongo was also named a delegate to the global synod, one of the youngest members to attend world-wide.
In response to our local work to carry out the synod, the pope said: “Escuchar es hacerse cargo también, ¿no? Cuando escucho me hago cargo. Cuando vos te haces cargo de una situación, te toca el corazón y tenes que ir adelante. La gente no está acostumbrada a escuchar. Y eso es lo que hace una verdadera catequesis. Escuchar y enseñar a escuchar.”
(Listening is also taking responsibility, isn’t it? When I listen, I take responsibility. When you take responsibility for a situation, it touches your heart, and you must do something. People aren’t used to listening. And that’s what true catechesis does. Listening and teaching others how to listen.”)
Listening and taking responsibility now seem like urgent activities. As an organizer, I have learned that these behaviors also form the basis for practicing politics, and are the bedrock of a healthy democracy.
When we form public friendships across lines of race, income and religion, we are better for it, and we can begin to imagine how to act in solidarity with people very unlike ourselves.
The Abrahamic traditions, particularly, teach us to choose hospitality over hostility, to welcome the stranger, the immigrant, and to treat our neighbors as ourselves.
These practices start at home – in our pews, our schools, in City Hall and Commissioners Court.
EPISO/Border Interfaith, now over 40 years old, is continuing to seek out new relationships, new institutions, and forming new alliances across our differences. Leaders are emerging who want to do something about mental health in El Paso, education, work, and the treatment of immigrants. The best way we know how to show our gratitude to the pope is to continue to organize and to build lasting public friendships.
Pope Francis remarked to us that “Fratelli Tutti” (We are all Brothers) may be the most important encyclical he wrote. In it, he teaches that dialogue and friendship are necessary for a healthy politics to emerge.
“Social peace demands hard work, craftsmanship,” he wrote in Chapter 6. “Life, for all its confrontations, is the art of encounter.”
Surya Kalra is lead organizer with EPISO/Border Interfaith.
Opinion: Francis was a Pope Who Listened to Those on the Margins, El Paso Matters [pdf]