Cupich: True Followers Of Christ Have Compassion For The Undocumented
(CBS) -- Chicago's new Catholic archbishop focused on the city's undocumented workers as he marched in a solemn Good Friday procession through the Pilsen neighborhood.
"Every time a person who has escaped violence in his own country, only to be exploited and humiliated in the United States because they lack papers, Jesus, too, is insulted," Archbishop Blaise Cupich said.
Cupich spoke in English and Spanish to the congregation gathered at the end of the Way of the Cross at St. Adalbert's Church on West 17th Street.
"We know who they are in our neighborhoods, our families, those who come to us in need, but also in our city, in our country, who pick our vegetables, who lack papers, who do the kind of work no one else wants to do," Cupich said.
He said some ignore them while true followers of Christ help.
"We find encouragement," he said. "We also find also the mission and identity of Jesus."
The Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, is attended by thousands of mostly Hispanic Catholics in the Pilsen neighborhood each Good Friday, and is one of a number of similar processions that take place in the Chicago Archdiocese each year during which Christians commemorate the death of Christ on the cross nearly 2,000 years ago.
