#wipa

Welcoming and Integrating

In the Diocese of Brooklyn we have adopted a call from Pope Francis to Welcome, Integrate, Promote, and Accompany (WIPA) our new arrivals. Through our WIPA program we respond to the new arrivals who desperatly are looking for stability and opportunities in our communities. It is encouraging to us that Pope Leo XIV discussed this in his recent visit to the Canary Islands which was a destination that Pope Francis wanted to make but unfortunately could not.

Pope Leo XIV asserted the need for Christians to welcome the migrant as he delivered his message.

Every welcoming society has responsibilities toward those who arrive, and those who are welcomed also discover that dignity, recognized as a right, flourishes when it becomes a duty and a sincere desire to build together with others. In this way, those who arrived as strangers can rediscover bonds, rebuild trust and feel like a living part of a community.

But Pope Leo's greatest contribution to this aspect of social ministry is his definition of integration.

Integration does not mean erasing the history of those who arrive or demanding that they leave behind everything that is part of their memory. Nor does it mean creating parallel worlds, closed off from one another, where people live side by side without truly encountering one another. Integration is a reciprocal journey: those who arrive learn to inhabit a new land, and those who welcome them learn to expand their own homes without diluting their identity or closing their hearts to the encounter. To you, dear migrant brothers and sisters, a noble and necessary part of this journey belongs: to open yourselves with trust to the community that welcomes you, to learn its language, to respect its laws, to get to know its customs, to participate in communal life and to offer your gifts with gratitude.

In this exhortation Pope Leo instructs both communities to be open to each other as they develop a new social relationship. Yes there will be cultural distinctions between the two groups, as Catholics we are not to see these as obstacles but a beautiful expression of God’s diversity. We offer this message to our new arrivals as we encourage them to be open to our own cultural tradition while celebrating their own cultural richness.

Finally, in this talk Pope Leo XIV also calls on all of us to examine our conscience. Not only welcoming nations but nations where migrants are leaving because they are the source of the problem. And this is a problem, an obvious one. The global community may need to step up to this problem by offering a deep anaylsis with regard to the social conditions that are causing these waves of migration.

In the meantime, we, the welcoming nations, need to also conduct this thorough examination of conscience.

A human conscience, and even more so a Christian conscience, cannot remain indifferent in the face of these graveyards of the sea, to the victims of shipwrecks and the lack of aid. Every life lost on these routes is a failure for the human family. Nevertheless, there is also a silent shipwreck that occurs after arrival: being left alone in a city, without a voice, without ties, work or a sense of security, and exposed to those who take advantage of vulnerability. Integration means preventing that second shipwreck. It means helping those who arrived wounded not to remain forever stuck in their pain, but to be able to get back on their feet, recognize their gifts and offer them to the community.

In the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens we realize that immigrants define our Catholic community and we proudly take up the moniker of being called the Diocese of immigrants. The link below shares a vsiual of this complex relationship and even this is a limited depiction.

My own family came in the late 1960's to New Rochelle and Queens as an early part of a wave of Colombians who would come throughout the 1970's escaping the period of conflict that began with "La Violencia" but continued with armed inserrection and social instability throughout the 1960's and 70's in Colombia.

Today we also see the waves of migration from contemporary conflicts in our world. We have Russians, Ukrainians and Eastern Europeans coming to parts of Brooklyn, we have Venezuelans, Haitians, Caribbeans and Ecuadorians coming throughout both our boroughs. We now see a large wave coming from Middle East and China in the areas of Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst where I live as well as Astoria and Flushing in Queens. These cultural waves continue to redefining the communities of Brooklyn and Queens as they always have since the dutch established the village of "Breuckelen" in 1646.

So today, our Catholic diocese feels drawn to respond to the words of our Holy Father for that is our legacy, to welcome and respond to the needs of the migrants who come to our shores. This is a significant part of our Diocesan history. Today, our Diocese's WIPA program helps integrate and welcome our new arrivals with resources to help them achieve the social stability they are desperately seeking while advocating for them. This has been a core aspect of our mission and continues to be.

Abv: 6.5%

Served: From the fridge

Aroma: Bread, malt, faint banana

Pour: Cloudy amber with full creamy white head

Taste: It’s all lovely honey bread upfront with some caramel sweet malt underneath and piney hops kicking in overground. That bitter kick is at the finish but the grainy spice is ever present too. Good balance between the fruit and bitters of a wit bier and an IPA with grassy harvest notes all over. A very good sup.