The profound resonances between Mexican, Peruvian, and Filipino colonial experience may be appreciated by looking...

This brief essay is written in honor and memory of Samuel Ruiz (1924-2011), Bishop of...

Professor Cherif Bassiouni, one of the country’s foremost experts on the political and social context...

This lecture argues that the agenda for the theological enterprise within the Caribbean region is...

I met Pedro and Juanita soon after I arrived at my new assignment as pastor of their parish. Like many (if not most) of the Mexican people who made up the growing majority of the parish, these two people were undocumented. They were unable to get driver’s licenses, or government help, or an income tax return, even though they were both working at factories and money was being taken out of their check each week. They also had a daughter who was a United States citizen. We were talking about the need for a change in our government’s immigration laws so that good, law-abiding people like Juanita and Pedro would not have to live in the shadows or keep looking over their shoulder every time they left home. And I’ll never forget what they told me at the end of our conversation, trying to calm my fears for them: “Don’t worry, Father, if nothing happens, we can just wait until our daughter turns twenty-one and then she can fix our papers.” Their daughter was three!

Many of the wishes and prayers for our world at the beginning of a new year contain the hope for “peace.” We wish that we can somehow get beyond the conflicts and divisions, and start fresh again.