‘Make a difference every day,’ Sister Norma Pimentel urges those attending Holy Cross Ministries gathering
PARK CITY — Sister Norma Pimentel, MJ, an advocate for immigrants who is the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, was the keynote speaker at the Autumn Harvest Benefit for Holy Cross Ministries of Utah.
HCM was founded 25 years ago with the proceeds of the sale of Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City, which was run by Holy Cross sisters.
“When they sold Holy Cross Hospital, they didn’t want to leave Utah,” so they determined to use the money to help the local community,” said Emmie Gardner, president and CEO of Holy Cross Ministries, who served as master of ceremonies for the Sept. 19 event.
“They really leaned into the idea that our immigrant community needed help and support,” Gardner said. “Twenty-five years later, it’s sad to say that story’s still the same story.”
Holy Cross Ministries provides early childhood education, community health workers, legal assistance, immigration assistance and trauma-informed mental health counseling, among other services, in the Park City and Salt Lake areas. Most of their clientele are immigrants and refugees.
Among those who attended the fundraiser, which was held in the Saint Mary of the Assumption parish hall, were the Most Rev. Oscar A. Solis, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City; Holy Cross Sisters Celine Dounies and Patrice McGee; and many of the organization’s benefactors and volunteers. Father Christopher Gray, the parish pastor, gave the blessing.
Sr. Norma opened her presentation by saying, “It is really important that we can bring out the best of ourselves so that others can also do their very best as well. … I don’t know that there’s anything else that we should do in life other than to truly do our very best to care for somebody else: your family, your community, others – whoever it is. I think that’s one of the reasons God gave us the opportunity to come to this world, to live with that admonition to make a difference every day from the moment that you get up in the morning; you know, the very first thing, open those eyes and tell yourself, ‘I’m ready, God. Just tell me what you need from me.’”
When she first began working with immigrants, she and another sister ran a shelter, where she often talked with the clients. She told of a man who had been tortured by having all his fingernails ripped out.
“Those are the kind of stories we would hear,” she said.
One day she and the other sister planned to join people who were advocating for immigrants at a congressman’s office, but when she learned the advocates were getting arrested, Sr. Norma was uncertain if she wanted to go. The other sister told her, “‘Norma, when we say we believe in something, and then we run away because things get tough, like they are right now … and we just leave because we’re scared, then we really don’t stand for anything,’” Sr. Norma recounted.
Because one of the sisters had to tend to the shelter, they couldn’t both go to jail. Sr. Norma decided she would be the one to stay. She was arrested, she said, and that was when she realized that “God was asking me to really know what I stood for. … I’m here because I believe that what is happening is not right, because I’ve seen the horrible things that are happening to the families; I’ve heard their stories. I see how families are destroyed.”
Day after day she hears the stories of people who “enter our country because they’re afraid, they’re scared for their lives; they’re scared for their kids’ lives,” she said.
“Their stories are just about how people take advantage of them, hurt them as they leave their countries. They’re afraid that if their children grow up there they won’t have a chance; they’ll be kidnapped, they’ll be taken and they’ll be forced to live a life that is not what God wants for us,” she added.
About 10 years ago she went to a detention facility that houses children who are not accompanied by their parents; some were not even 10 years old, she said. Originally officials refused to allow her to enter the cell with the children, but she said she wanted to pray with them.
“How do you say ‘no’ to a nun that wants to pray?” she asked, eliciting laughter from the audience.
She was given permission to enter the cell, and “it was the most difficult thing I have done in my life,” she said.
The children surrounded her, their faces full of tears, she said. They asked her to get them out of there and said they wanted to go home. “I cried,” she said, adding that the officers who were looking in also were crying.
“When I walked out of that cell, the officer in charge said, ‘Thank you, Sister. You helped us realize they’re human beings,’” she said. “I think we get so caught up in our laws and policies … that we forget the most important part of who we are: that we’re human, and … it keeps us from truly being the people God has created us to be – people that are filled with the love of God, and give that love out to others by always showing that love to every single person from the moment that we wake up in the morning. That’s the only mission we have in life.”
God is present in the world, she said, “but he needs all of us … to share the gifts that we are abundantly blessed with to make this world a better place.”
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