By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

When Auxiliary Bishops Gustavo Garcia-Siller, Francis J. Kane and Thomas J. Paprocki are ordained at Holy Name Cathedral, social justice advocates will have good friends in high places.

All three of the new bishops have worked extensively on justice issues, particularly in the area of immigrant rights. One, Bishop Francis J. Kane, was the archdiocese’s first director for its Office for the Ministry of Peace and Justice.

“All the major documents of the church deal with peace and justice issues,” said Bishop-designate Kane, who chose as his motto, “Thy Kingdom Come.” “They are essential and woven into the fabric of the church, which has no boundaries. It is part of our job to bring about the kingdom of justice and peace to everyone, not just our families or those who live nearby but all people.”

“Their involvement in social justice issues shows that being active in justice work is central to the Catholic faith,” said Bill Purcell, director of the archdiocese’s Office for Peace and Justice.

Bishop Kane served as director of the peace and justice ministry from 1979 to 1985, a time he calls “formative” in his priestly ministry. Those years which overlapped his time in the related positions of associate director for pastoral ministry, director of the department of community service and archdiocesan director for Catholic Relief Services.

Bishop Kane especially wants to dedicate much of his ministry to issues pertaining to immigrants’ needs.

“Many of our families’ relatives—including mine—were immigrants and faced some of the same challenges that still exist today,” he said. “Immigrants are uprooted from their homeland. They come here and need to belong. They also must have basic social justice and not be exploited. The church is the place that is open to everyone and welcoming. Ours is a place where we can help immigrants flourish and reach the potential God wants for them.”

Bishop Kane will assume leadership of Vicariate II, which includes the North Side and the North suburbs of Cook County, May 1. The vicariate includes many polyglot neighborhoods, some with many Asian and Eastern European immigrants.

Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki also has worked closely with immigrants in his most recent assignment, as pastor of St. Constance Parish on the Northwest Side. Over the past decade, St. Constance has welcomed many newly arrived Polish immigrants, and offers four weekend Masses in Polish.

“I think one of the reasons I was appointed bishop is my involvement in the Polish community, which in Chicago is second only to Warsaw,” he said. “It is important to have a bishop here aware of and sensitive to the needs of the Polish community.”

Bishop Paprocki will minister to Vicariate IV, on the far Northwest side and near West suburbs, including the area around St. Constance. It also also includes several areas with high populations of Spanish-speaking immigrants.

“The Polish people are very Catholic, very devout,” he said. “We need to make sure the Masses and sacraments are available to them in their native language.” He said that even for those who have learned English, it means more to them if they can have their child baptized, get married, or bury a loved one in Polish.

Paprocki, a civil and canon lawyer as well as former chancellor of the archdiocese, helped found the South Chicago Legal Clinic in 1981, shortly after being admitted to the Illinois bar, while he served as associate pastor of St. Michael Parish (83rd Street) on the South Side. The clinic—which Bishop Paprocki still serves as president—offers legal services to those who can’t afford private attorneys.

The clinic helps people with civil cases like bankruptcy, domestic problems and tenant/landlord issues.

The clinic, now called the Chicago Legal Clinic, is open to anyone and has grown to four locations: the original office in South Chicago, with newer locations in Pilsen, Austin and downtown Chicago. Fees are on a sliding scale based on the person’s ability to pay.

Paprocki said he sees many social issues among the community, particularly immigration issues and social services needs.

“As pastor I wouldn’t try to handle all of that through the parish, but it’s about knowing the resources available and knowing where to refer people,” he said.

When it comes to immigrant rights and social justice issues, Bishop Garcia-Siller offers a perspective that neither of his fellow new bishops can. He himself is an immigrant, arriving in California in 1980 as a seminarian with his religious order, the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, both to learn and absorb English and American culture and to serve the large population of predominantly Mexican migrant workers in the San Joaquin valley.

Later, his ministry took him to the Pacific Northwest, as workers migrated north to work in the vineyards and orchards of Oregon and Washington as the work in California became more mechanized.

For Bishop Garcia-Siller, the priority is to teach immigrants to speak for themselves and advocate for their own rights—and to look beyond their immediate needs.

“One of the greatest challenges was education,” he said. “Hispanics are very sensitive to social issues. Often, they come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and they can feel left out very easily, they can feel neglected.

“It’s not that difficult to pull people together around a social issue. But education is what is lacking. There is no education in the need for structural change—often they are limited even in Spanish. They want to be treated fairly, but it’s in the immediate things—am I being paid for all the work I do?—They don’t have the education to change the system. They’ll say, ‘Finally, they are paying me the minimum salary,’ but that’s not the point really.”

Of course, church leaders must also care for the immediate needs of all of their people, including the poor, said Bishop Garcia-Siller, whose Vicariate V includes everything from the mushrooming Southwest suburbs, home to the archdiocese’s newest parish, to Chinatown and several Spanish and Polish neighborhoods.

“Part of my work as a parish priest is to be loving and caring in the immediate situation,” he said, noting that people who are hungry must eat before they can focus on structural changes. It was at his assignments in the Fresno Diocese where he first worked with people in that level of poverty. “There were a lot of injustices there. I was involved in providing shelter and cash.”

The situation was different in the Pacific Northwest, where he worked with Cardinal George when he was bishop of the Yakima, Wash., Diocese and archbishop of Portland, Ore. There, immigrant seasonal workers were a newer phenomenon, so there were fewer structures to accommodate them, he said. At the same time, the church found itself preaching to a larger number of Catholic employers.

“Something that was very difficult was to bring those issues (of treating workers fairly) to the community,” he said. “We, with Bishop George, in the short time he was there, he brought a lot of awareness of that. ‘If I am a Christian, that has to be part of me.’” (See story on Cardinal George’s remarks on immigrant rights, Page 19)

Bishop Garcia-Siller said he looks forward to learning more about Chicago—and the archdiocese’s—history of community organizing and justice work.

At the same time, he hopes to continue to feel the kind of welcome he has always felt in the United States, and so far, in Chicago.

“I have never experienced discrimination,” the new bishop said. “I have seen it, but I have never experienced it.”

Contributing: Hilary Anderson, Chris Spoons