![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ofeguadalupe0100599.ipage.com\/hcsslacasitaen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/daca-priest-300x198.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The church wouldn\u2019t ordain him because he was undocumented. Pineda kept studying anyway, believing somehow, God would provide a path to priesthood.<\/p>\n
Then Obama created DACA. The parish where Pineda now works? Built on land that was once the KKK’s national headquarters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat God was asking of me was to work with the nonimmigrant community, to hopefully change hearts,\u201d Pineda says. \u201cPutting a face to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
ATLANTA \u2014 As he hands each person the Communion wafer, the priest watches his congregants walk back to their seats. They drop to their knees and bow their heads. Hands clasp. Around the church, a tear runs down a cheek, then another, then another.<\/p>\n
The priest knows the prayers behind the faces of these undocumented immigrants, whom it is his special mission to serve. It\u2019s a prayer he shares: Se\u00f1or Jes\u00fas, please don\u2019t make us leave the United States.<\/p>\n
The Rev. Rey Pineda is a DACA recipient. He\u2019s one of nearly 690,000 young adults granted temporary authorization to stay legally in the country that they were brought to as children \u2014 the only publicly identified DACA recipient who has used the authorization to become a Catholic priest.<\/p>\n
Across the country, \u201cdreamers\u201d such as Pineda, 29, are at the center of a debate so contentious that it threatens to shut down the government. One side believes that anyone who broke the law to come here in the first place doesn\u2019t belong here now. The other side believes in granting a chance to people who came here as children and are now enmeshed in American communities.<\/p>\n
The same debate is simmering at Pineda\u2019s Atlanta parish, where he leads a congregation of thousands of Hispanic immigrants and thousands of conservative white Southerners. It\u2019s a conflict about principles, such as fairness and culture, and welcome and security, and forgiveness.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also a conflict about what should become of their priest.<\/p>\n
From undocumented to ordained<\/p>\n
As Pineda sees it, the same desperate journey that made him an illegal immigrant at the age of 2 is also what made him a man called to serve God.<\/p>\n
After a car crash in Pineda\u2019s tiny home town in Mexico, his mother, Teresa, was in a coma; doctors told her husband that if she survived, she would never fully regain mental or physical function. Seeking help, the family somehow made it across the desert to Los Angeles \u2014 and, in Pineda\u2019s view, U.S. medical care was their first miracle.<\/p>\n
The family stayed in the country and moved to Atlanta. Pineda picked up on the theme of God\u2019s saving grace in his story early on. \u201cThat kind of began to shape for me the awareness that we had survived a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just due to my parents\u2019 own strength and perseverance, though that definitely had a lot to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
By 16, he wanted to be a priest. At church, though, the priests he consulted told him that he could not become one of them because he was undocumented and could not legally work in the United States.<\/p>\n
The church supported him as he pursued his calling anyway, first as a philosophy major at Southern Catholic College, then two more years in seminary. At that point, the vocations director sat him down to say that the church wouldn\u2019t ordain him because he was undocumented.<\/p>\n
Pineda kept studying anyway, believing that somehow, God would provide a path to the priesthood. And then one appeared, in the form of an executive order. Then-President Barack Obama created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals just in time for Pineda to become a priest.<\/p>\n
Seeing an \u2018illegal\u2019 at the altar<\/p>\n
The parish where Pineda works is one of Atlanta\u2019s stateliest \u2014 the Cathedral of Christ the King. Built on land that was once the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan before the cathedral\u2019s construction 80 years ago, the grand church is now home to a nearly 6,000-family congregation that is split racially and politically, much like North Georgia\u2019s 1.2 million Catholics and the Catholics of the nation.<\/p>\n
White Catholics, who make up just under 60 percent of Catholics in America, lean strongly Republican \u2014 60 percent voted for President Trump, more than had voted for any Republican in the past 16 years, while 37 percent voted for Hillary Clinton, according to Pew Research Center data.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Latino Catholics, who made up 34 percent of American Catholics in 2014 and are growing in number, voted in opposite proportions: 67 percent for Clinton and 26 percent for Trump.<\/p>\n
[\u2018He would dwell among the people\u2019: A pastor and his young family make their life among refugees]<\/p>\n
In September, when Trump canceled the DACA program that Obama created in 2012, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops decried the decision and called on Congress to pass legislation allowing dreamers to stay in the country. Last week, with the deadline to either strike a deal or shut down the government coming up this Friday, the bishops published their latest statement: \u201cAs a nation, we have a moral and humanitarian obligation to Dreamers.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the words of the bishops don\u2019t dictate the political stances of the faithful. At Christ the King, where Pineda is one of three active priests, it seems that almost everyone in the English-speaking Masses routinely refers to immigrants as \u201cillegals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many parishioners voted for Trump, who made his brash opposition to immigration the foremost position of his presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would build the wall,\u201d declares Andy Smith on Monday, right after sitting down with a cup of coffee from the cathedral kitchen that is named in his honor. Smith\u2019s photo is right there, in a frame, recognizing him for his dedicated service as the church sacristan. \u201cWe\u2019re a sovereign country. We have a right to protect our borders. I would end chain migration, and I would definitely do away with the lottery.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s in agreement with the president, whose rhetoric Smith finds amusing.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to immigrants who are already in the United States, and especially to DACA, Smith changes his tune. \u201cThey\u2019re taking care of business and their families, and they\u2019re already here. And the dreamers probably are the best of the lot. They\u2019re young. They\u2019re educated. Like Father Rey,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The 79-year-old sacristan\u2019s embrace of the priest, and his leap from learning about the priest\u2019s status to supporting broader protections for the country\u2019s approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants, resembles the stories told by many church members.<\/p>\n
The Rev. Rey Pineda celebrates Mass at Misi\u00f3n Cat\u00f3lica de Cristo Rey in Atlanta on Sunday. (Michael A. Schwarz for The Washington Post).
\nJackie Marcinko, a religion teacher in the school attached to the cathedral, doesn\u2019t like to talk about politics \u2014 she and her husband don\u2019t even tell each other who they\u2019ve voted for, since she leans left and he leans right. But Pineda\u2019s status has shaken her to action. She wrote her first emails ever to a member of Congress, to urge both of Georgia\u2019s Republican senators to protect Dreamers. When she saw a friend tweet that DACA was illegal, she fired back a message. \u201cThis is hitting home for me,\u201d she recalls writing. \u201cOne of these dreamers is one of my priests.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he first became a priest, Pineda thought his most important ministry would be working with immigrants like himself. That\u2019s a large part of his work at the cathedral. But after a year and a half at the cathedral, he thinks his work with families who have never met a dreamer is just as crucial.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat God was asking of me was to work with the nonimmigrant community, to be able to spread some light on this issue and be able to hopefully change hearts,\u201d he says. \u201cPutting a face to it, and also being their priest, is a good place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allen Kinzly, 35, became friends with the priest because of their shared enthusiasm for Atlanta United, the city\u2019s soccer team.<\/p>\n
Kinzly had voted for Trump. He felt he would be better for the economy and the military than Clinton would. But now, he\u2019s a strong believer in protections for dreamers like his friend. \u201cIt is because of my relationship and my friendship with Father Rey,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Flipping through photos on his phone, Kinzly, a video producer for the archdiocese\u2019s communications office, finds snapshots of Pineda hanging out one night after a soccer game. The priest, in a jersey and shorts instead of his clerical garb, suddenly grabbed the 20-foot-tall flagpole in the bed of Kinzly\u2019s red pickup, and waved the huge star-spangled banner through the air. Kinzly took photo after photo.<\/p>\n
With four days left for Congress to work out a deal or shut down the government, Kinzly stared at the photos from that night. \u201cHe\u2019s just as American as me and you.\u201d<\/p>\n
A priest who shares their struggle<\/p>\n
Five miles away from the cathedral\u2019s stained-glass grandeur, the parish has a second location: the Mision de Cristo Rey, a converted warehouse.<\/p>\n
When Pineda preaches at the Masses in Spanish that draw as many as 1,000 people each Sunday, his message is one of solidarity. Most of the churchgoers here are undocumented, or related to somebody who is.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey all know I\u2019m a dreamer,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen we pray, when we\u2019re nervous about things that are happening in the government around us, I always, kind of tongue-in-cheek, remind them: \u2018Don\u2019t worry. If they come for you, they come for me.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
The Catholic Church has been more cautious in offering direct aid to people at risk of deportation than some churches across the country, which have volunteered to be sanctuary spaces to protect people from immigration agents. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has encouraged priests and lay leaders to support immigrant neighbors in such situations. But it\u2019s up to each bishop whether to declare their churches sanctuaries.<\/p>\n
In Atlanta, Archbishop Wilton Gregory decided against it, saying the church couldn\u2019t guarantee that it would be able to shelter anyone from the law.<\/p>\n
So the help that Pineda offers is mostly spiritual \u2014 a listening ear, a word of encouragement.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, when he delivered a homily in Spanish after Trump\u2019s reported comments about immigrants from \u201cshithole\u201d countries, Pineda talked to the Latin American churchgoers about God\u2019s call to forgive. The offender might be our family or friends, he said. Or it might be \u201cpoliticians who are vilifying us, making us look like the enemy of the people. Even he has to be loved. That is what the Lord asks us do to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arelis Hernandez took that to heart. After the Mass, she said she was trying to pray for Trump. It\u2019s hard, though. She\u2019s an undocumented immigrant, and although she tells customers at the clothing store she works in that they shouldn\u2019t worry about their immigration status, when she goes home at night she\u2019s terrified.<\/p>\n
On bad days, she comes to Mass. \u201cWhen I come here, I talk to God. It makes me more relaxed,\u201d she says. \u201cEspecially the priest, he says, \u2018Don\u2019t worry.\u2019 Especially Father Rey. He says: \u2018I am too.\u2019 He says: \u2018I am a dreamer.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Before leaving the mission, she turned toward the altar and crossed herself one more time, gathering strength for the journey ahead.<\/p>\n
Chiqui Esteban contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
This article was taken from:
\nhttps:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/acts-of-faith\/wp\/2018\/01\/19\/if-they-come-for-you-they-come-for-me-if-congress-fails-to-save-daca-this-priest-could-be-deported\/?utm_term=.cdb6abd3709f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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