ROME — Pope Francis has praised the bishop of Brownsville Texas for his diocese’s work with immigrants, comparing the latter to Jesus Christ himself.
Brownsville Bishop Daniel E. Flores revealed on Twitter this week that he had received a personal letter from Pope Francis himself, in which the pontiff thanked the bishop and the people of Brownsville for their care of those who “find themselves far from home.”
“I have no doubt,” the pope said in his hand-signed missive, “that the current situation should drive us in the promotion and integration of those who share the same condition in which our Lord found himself.”
The pope does not specify whether this “condition” in which Jesus found himself refers to his birth in a stable in Bethlehem, the flight into Egypt when King Herod sought to kill him as a child, or to his presence on earth, where “his own did not receive him.”
El Santo Padre, el Papa Francisco, envía su bendición al Pueblo de Dios en la Diócesis de Brownsville. pic.twitter.com/jnZgMfvhW6
— Amigo de Frodo (@bpdflores) December 5, 2022
In fact, Francis has often compared the plight of migrants to Jesus Christ. In 2019, for instance, the pope said that the strangers who knock on our door are “Jesus himself” in his message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
“Jesus knows well the pain of not being welcomed,” the pope said in a 2018 tweet for International Migrants’ Day. “May our hearts not be closed as were the houses in Bethlehem.”
During the flight into Egypt, “the child Jesus experienced with his parents the tragic fate of the displaced and refugees,” Francis said in 2020, “which is marked by fear, uncertainty and unease.”
The pope has also said that like Jesus, migrants and refugees are often “forced to flee.”
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