Here is an excerpt from Bishop of New York Andy Dietsche’s response to the crisis regarding the Pope’s call for every Roman Catholic parish in Europe to provide refuge and sanctuary for at least one refugee household:
“In the late 1990s the church I then served as rector (Church of the Good Shepherd, West Springfield) did exactly that. We certainly did not know exactly what we were doing, but we agreed to be an EMM parish. One day we learned that a Muslim Bosnian family of four, from the refugee camp in Germany where they had spent the last nine years, was on their way to our town: to our church and to us. And we accepted certain obligations toward them. We made promises we had to keep. We said that we would take responsibility for them, and we did. And going on twenty years later, that family thrives in America and continues their membership as the one Muslim family in the Church of the Good Shepherd. In the end, it didn't even cost us very much, except for the love we gave them, the welcome at journey's end, and the sweat equity we expended on their behalf and in facilitating their settlement in our town. What we learned was that a medium-sized working-class congregation operating under a woeful deficit can defy the conventional wisdom and do big things. And be bold. And be transformed by it. Believe me when I say that it was by no means only that refugee family who received their freedom in those days, not only the lost sheep who were blessed.”
