Faces of Hope

by Carol Frances Jegen, BVM
Published in Salt magazine, Winter 1975

BVM involvement in the current farmworker struggle for justice has been steadily gaining momentum since the summer of 1973. In July of that yar when several Sisters were invited to participate in the Institute on Ignatian Spirituality at the University of San Francisco, a major portion of their deliberations centered on the implications of the Justice in the World document, issued by the 1971 Synod of Bishops in Rome. That document was keynoted with the statement:

Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.

The Institute took place in California during some of the most difficult days of the United Farm Workers strike which had begun the previous April when the contracts of thousands of UFW members had been handed over to the Teamsters Union without consultation on the part of the workers. To express solidarity with the farmworkers who were then facing outbursts of violence on the picket lines, members of the Ignatian Institute were invited to spend the feast of St. Ignatius as a Day of Solidarity with the farmworkers by traveling down into the San Joaquin Valley for informative talks and discussions, culminating with a Eucharist and a Press Conference.

Three of the BVM Sisters who responded to this invitation spent the next two weeks imprisoned in Fresno County with approximately 60 other Sisters and priests and 450 farmworker women and men who had broken court injunctions. The injunctions were designed to curtail picketing by severely limiting the number of pickets in any one place and by prohibiting the use of bullhorns, the only viable means of communicating with workers in the fields and vineyards. Sound legal opinion agrees that such injunctions clearly violate the U.S. Constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

Imprisonment with farmworkers gave rise to many new insights regarding the needs of migrant and seasonal farm laborers in the struggle against the monopolies of agribusiness. It also meant the beginning of several beautiful friendships with a people who saw in our Sisters the compassionate concern of their Catholic Church which centers so much of its devotional life around Our Lady of Guadalupe, special friend of the poor and oppressed.

Since that summer of 1973, not only has BVM involvement with the farmworker struggle  increased, but the official statements of the Church have spoken to the Gospel dimensions of the farmworker struggle. The United States Catholic Conference Labor Day statements of 1973 and 1975 have addressed the farmworker problem including the complicated question of the illegal alien.

The bicentennial hearings in preparation for the 1976 Conference on Justice have pointed to all the issues involved in the current agricultural problems, including the plight of the small farmer in the Midwest. Both the Canon Law Society at its annual meeting in San Diego in October 1975, and the United States bishops in their annual meeting a month later, hailed the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, as an “historic step in the right direction” with its provisions for secret ballot elections, and pledged support for the implementation of that law in the spirit in which it was constructed. These statements of support were made because numerous violations of the new law were recorded in the election procedures last fall, and remain to be adjudicated by the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

In 1974 Cesar Chaves, President of the United Farm Workers, was received in a special audience by Pope Paul VI, who remarked:

We know in particular, of your sustained effort to apply the principles of Christian social teaching, and that in striving to do so you have faithfully worked together with the Bishops of your country and with the support of their authoritative representatives, the members of the United States catholic Bishops Ad Hoc Committee on Farm Labor.

We pray that this laudable spirit of cooperation will continue and that, through the all-powerful assistance of the Lord, harmony and understanding will by promoted with liberty and justice for all.

The BVM “liberation summer” of 1975 saw seven BVMs out in California involved in different aspects of farmworker ministry. We share some of these reflections with our Salt readers now, as we all enter into this bicentennial year eagerly searching for more ways to make “liberty and justice for all” a greater reality in our world.

At the time of this article, Sister Carol Frances Jegen was Director of the Religious studies Program and Professor of Theology and Mundelein College in Chicago.