Miami Archbishop Says Florida Shouldn’t Follow Texas Refugee Stance

MIAMI - Refugees make an important impact in the United States and should not be denied resettlement as the Texas governor recently decided, said Miami Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski.

The archbishop, writing in a letter to the editor posted online Jan. 16 for the Miami Herald, noted that Albert Einstein was a refugee and former Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez was an unaccompanied minor when he came to Florida as part of Operation Peter Pan - when more than 14,000 Cuban minors came to the United States in the early 1960s.

“Today, Texas wouldn’t allow either one to resettle there. Florida, and refugees, would lose if we were to follow Texas’s example,” he wrote.

Wenski said Catholic Charities agencies have “a proud history as the longest-serving providers of refugee resettlement services in Florida,” noting that they sponsored Cubans in Operation Peter Pan and have resettled refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the 1970s and continued resettling refugees when the U.S. Refugee Program began in 1980.

The archbishop pointed out that a recent executive order by the Trump administration requires governors and county executives to provide written consent before refugees are resettled in their respective states or counties.

“Forty-two governors have gone on record supporting refugee services - 19 are Republican. Only the governor of Texas decided to discontinue resettlement - apparently without much public support,” he added.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Jan. 10 that the state would no longer resettle refugees.

The governor’s decision, announced in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, made Texas the first state to reject refugee resettlement after the president’s order and his Jan. 21 deadline for governors to publicly say if they would accept refugees after June 2020.

The Miami Archbishop should be worried about the fact that most of his flock don’t believe essential Catholic teaching. When he faces his Judge at death, that’s what he’ll be judged on. Very few bishops seem to care that polls of Catholics, even Church going Catholics are nearly apostates. The hideous music they are subject to is effectively the only catechisis they receive. Catholics are left with the impression that immigration is on a par with doctrinal teaching. The issue of immigration is a matter of justice and it is the gov’t that has been entrusted by God with the charism to adjudicate that justice.

I’m sick of bishops writing op eds in newspapers to push their improperly exercised prudential judgment on matters that belong to the govt. The bishop’s job is to teach the moral principles underlying justice, not how to adjudicate it in various instances.

. . .in a telephone interview Wednesday, the head of an advocacy group for survivors of priestly abuse called Wenski's speech "rank hypocrisy" in light of cases that suggest Wenski's handling of priestly sexual abuse in the Orlando diocese was questionable. The allegations against Wenski mirror those that have dogged his superior, Pope Benedict XVI, over how Benedict handled a sexual-abuser priest in his Munich diocese when he was a cardinal there. The pope named Wenski to the Miami post. Victims' advocates such as David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), say a deliberate veil of secrecy about sexual-abuser priests extends to the highest levels of the Catholic Church. "We are distressed by Wenski's deception, delay and recklessness in several recent cases, especially a recent one involving an alleged rape by a priest and a seminarian," Clohessy said in a statement Tuesday. A statement released by the Orlando diocese on Wednesday said that Wenski followed proper procedure in investigating cases of alleged sexual abuse. A Miami archdiocese spokeswoman declined to comment. . .Among the SNAP accusations is that Wenski removed the Rev. Carlos Bedoya from the priesthood in November 2006, a month after a Volusia County sheriff's report revealed that Bedoya had participated in sexual battery against a man that year. SNAP claims Wenski knew about the criminal charges against Bedoya for weeks but told parishioners that Bedoya had left for personal reasons. . .Then, four days after Easter, the Orlando diocese announced the financial settlement of another case, with a female victim of the Rev. Wladyslaw Gorak. Gorak disappeared from his Newark, N.J., church, changed his name to Walter Fisher and resurfaced three months later as a parish priest in Lakeland, where he stalked and attacked the woman in her home in 2004. According to court documents, the Orlando diocese did not check Gorak's credentials until several months after he was assigned to the Lakeland parish. Then Newark Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli sent a letter to Orlando saying that Gorak had "good moral character," though he had attacked women in New Jersey, the lawsuit said. Gorak pleaded guilty in 2007 to charges of burglary, assault and stalking and was sentenced to four years' probation. . .: Victims’ group questions new archbishop’s record on sexual abuse

“We should be grateful that Donald Trump is president because he dominates the news cycle,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami said during the bishops’ discussions. “If he didn’t, we would have a lot more bad press.” At that, several bishops seated at the long rows of tables could be seen burying their faces in their palms. . . : Paralysis and Anguish: How a Meeting of Bishops Ended With No Action on Sex Abuse

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