A parish story: A timely Gospel call, lay-clergy teamwork and ‘an act of solidarity’

A banner on St. Ignatius Church proclaims the parish’s “accompaniment and solidarity with all those in our city who need to feel that there are people in their corner,” parish Solidarity Committee member Mike Neary said. (Photo by Catholic San Francisco)
 
February 8, 2018
Rick DelVecchio
 
With the exception of the eucharistic celebration, reading the signs of the times to answer the Gospel commandment in Matthew 25 may be the most vital work a Catholic community can take on. But human fears and divisions are what they are, all of us carry the treasure in earthen vessels, and 2,000 years of experience have not made it any easier to go the margins in radical hospitality.
 
But one parish in San Francisco, St. Ignatius on the University of San Francisco campus, has been undertaking the risky pilgrimage in a new way, with surprising impact on the solidarity of the parish internally as well as on its capacity for Spirit-filled outreach.
 
St. Ignatius pastor Jesuit Father Gregory Bonfiglio and lay representatives Annette Lomont and Mike Neary sat down with Catholic San Francisco to share their story with the full archdiocesan community. Father Bonfiglio, Lomont and Neary are co-equals with Lorrain Bader, Jim DeGraw, Amy Stewart, Chris Unruh and Devi Zinzavada on the recently formed parish Solidarity Committee.
 
The team members are enthusiastic not only about the results of their project but also about the underlying process of discernment that made the new degree of outreach possible.
 
St. Ignatius pastor Jesuit Father Gregory Bonfiglio, Annette Lomont and Mike Neary, members of the parish Solidarity Committee, are pictured Jan. 23 at the parish offices in San Francisco. (Photo by Catholic San Francisco)
 
Clergy-laity collaboration
The effort is an example, perhaps reminiscent of the Pauline churches of early Christianity and certainly in the ecclesiological spirit of Vatican II, of clerical-laity collaboration at a common working table with all community members invited to have an equal voice.
 
St. Ignatius is an 1,800-member community with a decades-long history of generous outreach to the poor. The parish’s Shelter Meal Program serves 12,000 meals a year, and St. Ignatius hosts monthly Sunday brown-bag lunches.
 
But Father Bonfiglio, who made lay leadership his primary focus since becoming pastor, and many others in the parish had long “felt an urge to take action beyond direct service and work on advocacy for real change that could benefit people,” Neary said.
 
Father Bonfiglio recalled that although St. Ignatius served thousands of people in need, it “didn’t have anything on advocacy.”
 
That concern set in motion a process to rethink St. Ignatius’ role as a mission church. Beginning in 2016, parishioners would gather at a common table to challenge one another with the question, “What is God asking us to do as a faith community?”
 
The question posed obvious risks. What if parishioners couldn’t reach consensus or divided along political lines on an issue such as immigration?
 
“We’re a left-leaning parish politically theologically, ecclesiologically,” Father Bonfiglio said, “and there are a number of right-wing people who choose to make this parish their home, and I as a pastor have a responsibility to make them feel welcome, to make sure they have a chair at the table, both the eucharistic table and the table of conversation and participation.”
 
Conflict was a clear risk, but Lomont saw opportunity to “actually talk about those feelings, fears, trepidations.”
 
Discerning new directions for mission
With Lomont taking the lead at the pastor’s request and Jesuit Father John Coleman providing staff support, St. Ignatius turned to its sister Jesuit parish in Portland for a path forward. The Portland parish had conducted a year of discernment, long enough to ensure that no one’s agenda dominated. The Portland community limited the scope of its discernment to five issues – environmental justice, immigration, human trafficking, restorative justice and economic justice. The discernment year included speakers, reflection and prayer, followed by a daylong retreat and a vote by all participants.
 
St. Ignatius in San Francisco held a similar process on the same set of issues, culminating in a half-day retreat.
 
“People from the pews were invited to attend at all points in the process and in the end the decision was a vote,” Father Bonfiglio said. “There was movement, and the movement moved toward human trafficking out of the five.”
 
In all, 75 to 125 parishioners participated, and a working meeting following the vote drew 30.
 
“That’s gone forward slowly,” Father Bonfiglio said. “And then a year ago we have a new president and this whole issue of immigration is hot, so St. Agnes came out of the gate immediately and by Friday they had declared themselves a sanctuary parish.”
 
St. Agnes is a smaller Jesuit parish in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. The St. Ignatius community felt challenged to respond.
 
“The church just couldn’t remain silent, so what was going to be our role so we take the Gospel seriously?” Father Bonfiglio said. “When the circumstances change we need to re-evaluate.”
 
Meeting the stranger
The election was one of many issues that forced the parish to take a deep and prayerful look at its response to the fast-changing signs of the times. Neary said the issues included “increased negative rhetoric toward undocumented immigrants following the inauguration” and Pope Francis’ and other church leaders’ various statements on migration. The crisis also gave the parish a chance to take stock of its collective capacity to meet the stranger, including its long-standing Las Vecinas ministry supporting a covenant relationship with Parrochia San Antonio in Soyapango, El Salvador, and accompaniment training in February 2017 for the greater community that kindled parishioners’ desire to do more for immigrants.
 
Also in February, Father Bonfiglio wrote a pastoral letter in response to the feelings many had about the president’s executive order on immigration. By the end of March, in a step that led to the formation of the parish Solidarity Network, Father Bonfiglio made the decision “to have people gather on a Sunday afternoon at 3 to prayerfully dispose ourselves to what God is disposing this faith community to do in these new circumstances. The issue of sanctuary was forced.”
 
The pastor asked community members to spend time personally and in small groups with the pros and cons of two statements: One that SI will declare itself a sanctuary parish, period, the other that SI will not do so.
 
Father Bonfiglio, who borrowed the model from Ignatian priestly community discernment, likened the process to “walking down the street from two different directions.”
 
Candid views exchanged prayerfully
The group was nervous about sanctuary “because of the baggage that term carries,” Father Bonfiglio said. “What people were really eager for was the notion of solidarity – that was the bottom line.”
 
Participants submitted their notes. They were torn.
 
Comments from those in favor of the sanctuary idea included:
 
“Gives parishioners an opportunity to act, to serve.”
 
“Sends a clear message that demonstrates our commitment.”
 
“Acting against injustice.”
 
“Doing nothing collaborates with injustice.”
 
“As a broad citywide parish, this would show us to be inclusive of our community.”
 
“Supports families and individuals and keeps people from danger.”
 
Among the concerns of those opposed:
 
“Might upset some parishioners who would see this as too political.”
 
“Potential of creating a divisive issue in our parish.”
 
“Some parishioners may not agree with using parish fund[s] to help undocumented immigrants.”
 
“The possibility of becoming the focus of retaliation/ill feeling/payback.”
 
“A sanctuary statement only has meaning if you have a program behind it.”
 
Father Bonfiglio sent the notes to all participants with an invitation to read and pray over them.
 
“Then the next instruction was really specific,” he said. “I didn’t want to know what they thought; I wanted to know what the feelings were that emerged when they prayed about the notes. Then, why? Then, simply send those back to me. And then eight of the 25 responded. And the pendulum was so clear.”
 
The question was put in such a way that it was inescapable to have to answer: If this were the last decision of your life, what would you do?
 
Sanctuary as solidarity
The decision went in favor of sanctuary, leading to a follow-up gathering “to discuss the clear movement of people’s prayer” over the March meeting notes, Father Bonfiglio said.
 
“It was clear what direction we were going to move, but how was the question,” he said. “I think it was our work with Faith in Action and Lorena Melgarejo that we continued to get more data to shape our direction.”
 
Soon after, Faith in Action contacted St. Ignatius and St. Agnes about a family at the border that needed accompaniment.
 
“That fell through, but then we were contacted again about a family that was on the streets and in a shelter and needed support,” Father Bonfiglio recalled. “That came about. This was a part of our ‘Oh, look. We’re already doing sanctuary. We might as well make it public, since it, too, is an act of accompaniment.’”
 
Father Bonfiglio and lay team members Lomont and Neary described the leavening effect of the discernment process on the large and complex parish during turbulent times.
 
“A lot of us came to the meeting as an outlet for our political frustrations and at the end of the process it turned into something Gospel- and spiritually oriented. It was an apolitical environment,” Neary said.
 
The process left the parish “with a solid foundation,” Neary said. “I don’t know if any of us could have predicted where we are now. It’s been an organic, evolving process.”
 
The group met first Mondays from after Easter 2017 to December and it took that long for the word sanctuary to seep into the community’s lexicon. It was a hard word to define, Neary said. With the lay volunteers taking the lead, the parish developed a three-part sanctuary identity: Accompaniment, advocacy and offering some way of shelter.
 
Last October, Father Bonfiglio and St. Agnes pastor Jesuit Father Ray Allender put out a joint statement opening with Leviticus 19:34: “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.” The pastors detailed their communities’ commitments as sanctuary parishes, including accompaniment, advocacy, prayer and helping migrants find refuge.
 
In November, SI issued a statement joining St. Agnes to “publicly acknowledge what is already true: That both St. Ignatius and St. Agnes parishes are sanctuaries for migrants, refugees, and other peaceful people who may be subject to exclusion or removal from the United States.”
 
For SI, the Gospel breakthrough of the sanctuary decision came down to one word: solidarity. “It was an act of solidarity, for parishes like ours to make a statement for people struggling with immigration. That was it in the end,” Father Bonfiglio said.