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Antonia Portillo Cruz shares cheese cubes with residents during lunch at a church-run shelter for asylum seekers in Tijuana, Mexico, April 23, 2019. She left Honduras with two of her six children in January. "We are not here because we want. We are here because we are threatened, we are obligated." (CNS photo/Andres Martinez Casares, Reuters)
April 26, 2019
Vatican News
Pope Francis has donated $500,000 to assist migrants in Mexico. The funds, from the Peter’s Pence collections, will be distributed among 27 projects promoted by sixteen Mexican dioceses and religious congregations, which requested assistance in continuing to provide food, lodging and basic necessities to the migrants.
According to a statement from Peter’s Pence, “In recent months, thousands of migrants have arrived in Mexico, having travelled more than 4,000 kilometres on foot and with makeshift vehicles from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Men and women, often with young children, flee poverty and violence, hoping for a better future in the United States. However, the US border remains closed to them.”
In particular, the aid is intended to assist the more than 75,000 people who arrived in Mexico in 2018, in six migrant caravans. “All these people were stranded, unable to enter the United States, without a home or livelihood," the statement reads. “The Catholic Church hosts thousands of them in hotels within the dioceses or religious congregations, providing basic necessities, from housing to clothing."