“To Welcome the Immigrant”

Today in 1971 marks the founding of the Brooklyn Diocese’s Catholic Migration Office, the first of its kind in the world. The office was founded partially in response to Pope Paul VI’s 1969 instruction Pastoralis Migratorum Cura, which asked local Churches to expand their spiritual and material outreach to the newcomers in their midst. Bishop Francis J. Mugavero (1914-1991), the son of Sicilian immigrants, appointed Father Anthony J. Bevilacqua, then the Assistant Chancellor, to direct the office. Bevilacqua, who earned degrees in both civil and canon law, was one of America’s first immigration lawyers.

Earlier bishops erected national parishes for the new immigrant groups, but by the 1970’s neighborhoods constantly changed as immigrants moved in search of better jobs, so Mugavero (seen above) founded “ethnic apostolates” as a more flexible way to serve their needs. The first apostolates were founded for Hispanics, Italians, Haitians, Poles, Koreans and the Chinese. Today there are twenty-eight. The migration office provides legal services for immigrants, job training, and job placement. It became a nationwide model. In a 1978 interview, Bishop Mugavero explained the office’s raison d’etre:

How would we respond if Jesus asked us about our responses to the new wave of immigrant New Yorkers who speak languages other than English? Our record of welcoming the wave that came here in the last century and the early 1900s was spotty… Have we learned from history? Are we telling our new immigrants in Astoria, Bensonhurst, East Harlem and Cambria Heights that this is their city too?

Mugavero frequently referred to Brooklyn as a “Diocese of Immigrants.” Father Bevilacqua’s successor, Monsignor Ronald Marino, has noted that the office’s existence is central to the identity of a diocese whose “particular charism is to welcome the immigrant.”