Vatican City, Oct 5, 2025 / 07:00 am
Sister Norma Pimentel is known as “the immigrants’ nun.” For over a decade, she has directed the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV) Humanitarian Respite Center, a humanitarian aid center located in McAllen, Texas, on the border with Mexico. From there, she has provided assistance to people who arrive in the United States seeking asylum.
According to Pimentel, the increase in arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to expel immigrants who lack legal status in the country has unleashed a climate of fear in communities.
‘Raids are taking place everywhere’
“People are extremely afraid … they know that nowhere is safe, they pick you up anywhere, and you can’t even go to the supermarket because raids are taking place everywhere,” the religious explained.
Last year, the center received a legal request from the Texas attorney general’s office to compel a CCRGV representative to sit for a deposition regarding its immigrant assistance efforts, although the case was subsequently dismissed by a judge.
Pimentel said the sense of widespread fear has also spread to other residents of the Rio Grande Valley. Many now think: “If I help him, maybe something will happen to me too,” she told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, shortly after participating in the Oct. 2 “Refugees and Migrants in Our Common Home” conference with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican.
The initiative, part of the Jubilee of Migrants, is the first global meeting promoted by the Vatican to bring together religious institutions, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and experts dedicated to addressing the challenges of migratory flows.
At the meeting, the pontiff asked all of the participants to promote a culture of “reconciliation and hope” to address the “urgent challenges” of migration.
‘You can’t say you’re pro-life if you don’t defend immigrants’
“The Holy Father strongly affirms that immigrants are human beings who must be recognized and treated with dignity. Therefore, you can’t say you’re pro-life if you don’t defend the lives of human beings and immigrants,” Pimentel pointed out.
Every so often, dozens of exhausted people knock on her door, their bodies reflecting the consequences of a hellish journey. Most travel hundreds of miles on foot to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.
Pimentel, a sister of the Missionaries of Jesus, who works side by side with the bishop of Brownsville, Daniel Flores, always greets them with a warm welcome: “We are right on the border, there with the immigrants, with the migrant families, who are truly part of our Church.”
“We are very versed in how to be present, how to speak and encourage people to be good neighbors, to help each other, to not feel afraid that the government won’t allow us to live our religion, our faith, and to be present to help people when they need it,” she explained.
The most important thing is “that they don’t feel abandoned and alone” and that they realize that, despite the growing hostility, “they do matter in this life.”
This total commitment is born from the conviction that every person who suffers bears the face of Christ. In any case, Pimentel doesn’t hide the fact that she sometimes feels overwhelmed. “We don’t have enough resources,” she lamented.
She’s also convinced that giving these migrants a face and sharing the horror stories they endure is the best antidote to society being fed up with immigrants: “When I see a crying child who comes up to me and says, ‘Help me,’ with tears streaming down his face, [I want] to be able to share that with other people. That way, people can feel that pain, the cries of that child or that mother who is scared and afraid of how to protect her children.”
That’s why she never misses an opportunity to make known the pain of these people because “when you get close to a human being who is suffering, your heart connects and you change.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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‘You can’t say you’re pro-life if you don’t defend immigrants’, Leo XIV’s broadline standard implies defense of illegal border crossings, human trafficking most egregiously children, cohesion with the immense drug cartel industry, the addiction and living death of American youth. Sister Pimentel along with Bishop Flores is a misguided collaborator.
Greater fault belongs with His Holiness for placing the murder of children in the womb on an equal plane of Justice with illegal border crossings. His unfortunate New Paradigm moral theology is a countermand to truth and justice as has been held immemorial. What this forebodes is continued equal balancing of moral teaching on intrinsic evils with humanitarian principles of justice.
We already have encountered this disparity of Justice with the Sexually disordered LGBT Jubilee Celebration at the Vatican, justifying sexually disordered behavior contrary to natural law with ‘personal life choices’, free will, inclusive unity.
For those of us who thought the battle was over with our new pontiff, the battle has taken on a more subtle dimension of quiet implementation.
To charitably meet spiritual and physical needs on a temporary basis is one thing. Granting blessings and accommodation of criminal entry across a nation’s borders is another entirely distinct matter.
How you will never (italics) hear the seamless garment theory used – Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture, Oct. 2.
“People are extremely afraid … they know that nowhere is safe, they pick you up anywhere, and you can’t even go to the supermarket because raids are taking place everywhere.”
And this is a bad thing, why exactly? People who are breaking the law should be afraid of the consequences.
Those who aren’t guilty of illegal residence here in the US shouldn’t be fearful. Those who are should be, as actions have consequences and laws need to be enforced.
A nation that does not enforce its own laws is the other side of the tyranny coin: Illegal aliens running roughshod over our own citizens instead of the government doing it.
Another trouble-making nun who encourages law-breakers and for her efforts her Catholic Charities organization enriched itself with government funds. Sister, you’re a fraud.
God did not create the man-made border between Mexico and the USA. God does recognize how Americans treat foreigners. If Americans insist on deporting immigrants, why are they doing it in such a cruel manner? God is watching.
Gerald, these illegal aliens who broke Federal law by crossing our border were asked to leave the USA. Transportation was offered to them to return them to their own country. The ones who are treated “cruelly” are those who have criminal backgrounds and are resisting the return trip. Gerald, I suggest that you go work for Immigration and give them your plan for how to rid our country from these illegals who are violent criminals in a peaceful manner. Let’s us all know how this works out for you.
They’re not going to leave the buffet on their own.
How many people are actually housing and feeding illegals in the name of being Christian?
They are offering cash payments to go back.
GERALD WRITES:”God did not create the man-made border between Mexico and the USA.”
Did God create the border between the Vaticàn City State and the City of Rome, Italy. Then why is there a severe penalty from the Vatican for those who illegally penetrate its premises? Why?
God didn’t make the border and truthfully most of it was a land grab on the part of the US. Some ranches/communities were split in half by the border.
But we are instructed to obey those in authority. Continuing to do business with the cartels destroys lives on both sides of the border. The border needs to be secured. Immigrants should not be extorted and delivered to the border by criminal gangs.
I agree with Sister that these are our brothers and sisters in Christ and should be cared for. But in the long run we have to run our immigration in a reasonable, humane, and lawful way. Otherwise we are complicit enabling the violence and corruption that migrants are fleeing from.
“God didn’t make the border and truthfully most of it was a land grab on the part of the US. Some ranches/communities were split in half by the border.”
Whether or not it was a land grab is irrelevant at this point in history. The territory is ours, and we have a responsibility and a duty to enforce the border to protect American citizens. Americans first.
You also seem to operate under the assumption that cartels are the primary drivers behind illegal immigration, and that is not true. People are choosing to cross the border illegally, independently of the activity of cartels. Enforcing the border is appropriate and necessary; it does not make us “complicit” in violence. It’s called the rule of law for a reason.
Cartels are offering bounties for the kidnapping and murder of ICE agents.
Illegal aliens are bringing in drugs that kill scores of thousands of Americans each year.
And the children who are smuggled in are often sold into sexual slavery.
These are not claims. They are facts.
Do Sister Immigrants and Pope Leo really want the Church to be complicit with such evil?
No other country in human history has been as welcoming to immigrants as America.
And so I respond to the pope’s recent comments by standing outside the Vatican gates and calling, “Pope Leo, tear down this wall!”
Another Sr. Polyester Pantsuit who risks nothing, sacrifices nothing, pays nothing, but believes it is her right to lecture the rest of society about the requirements of charity. This socialist anarchy is theft and lawlessness. This “nun” belongs in jail.