Each year, the PCMRT Subcommittee organizes a pastoral visit in a different diocese among migrant farmworkers and diocesan/local leaders who accompany them, to learn about the needs and realities of the local community, discuss best practices and how to grow and strengthen ministry efforts, and to pray together as the Body of Christ. Polly Duncan Collum, a visiting team leader who participated in the 2024 Pastoral Visit in the Diocese of Raleigh, shares her reflections on the experience:
“You know what we are thinking about all day long, don’t you?” a tobacco farmworker in Colerain, North Carolina asked me in Spanish. “Our families.” He pulled out his phone and proudly showed me photos of his wife and young children. A wife and mother who works processing crabs in Mattamuskeet, North Carolina also searched for family photos to show me soon after we began talking. As a wife and mother myself, I can’t stop thinking about these two and the other migrant farmworkers we met who are away from their families most of the year. Since our delegation visited migrant camps with PCMRT in August, these migrant farmworkers and their families have been very present in my heart and prayer.
I had visited the Colerain farm and the seafood processing plant previously, as both are served by Glenmary Home Missioners. I have been involved in Hispanic-Latino ministry and I am a member of the core group of the USCCB’s Justice for Immigrants initiative. As such my focus has been on the struggles of undocumented persons and the need for immigration reform. But my eyes were opened when I learned during the PCMRT pastoral visit just how dehumanizing living and working conditions can be for seasonal farmworkers in the U.S. legally. The description of the loneliness many migrant farmworkers experience touched me especially, and the isolated locations of many migrant camps throughout the U.S. strikes me as a situation ripe for exploitation.
Of course many farm owners and managers treat their workers as they should. But when that is not the case, who is watching to ensure that the basic human rights of the people who grow and harvest our food (those with and without work visas) are being respected? Apparently, the US Department of Labor does not have the capacity to closely monitor all farming operations.
Mostly I keep asking myself how we in the Church might better support migrant farmworkers by connecting them with our Catholic parishes-- to give them pastoral care, community, and spiritual nourishment, as well as practical help such as transportation to buy groceries.
Endeavoring to strengthen connections between migrant farmworkers and the parish communities in the rural South served by Glenmary Home Missioners has become a hope of mine. In North Carolina I was grateful to meet ministry leaders from around the U.S. who have been involved in migrant ministry for many years; they are a wonderful resource for Glenmary as we consider how we might deepen our accompaniment of migrant farmworkers in the areas where we serve. As Glenmary Brother David Henley commented about the PCMRT pastoral visit, “Hearing the testament of people involved in migrant ministry a long time was very educational—not simply to welcome migrants, but how to walk with them and serve them and their needs.”