Sister Norma Pimentel, MJ, has long advocated for the humane and dignified treatment of migrant people who arrive in our country. Despite doing much of her work quietly and behind-the-scenes, recognition of her holy work has prompted praise from many—including the late Pope Francis.
Immigration. It’s a trigger word that elicits immediate and entrenched reactions from people. But like many hot-button phrases, there’s a lot under the surface of those four syllables. Emotions run high when the topic is discussed by politicians, religious leaders, and pundits. It’s impossible to remove the political dimensions of immigration, but what if we tabled it, set it aside for a moment, and listened to our hearts instead of our minds alone?
What if we viewed immigration through the lens of our faith and the clarion call of the Gospel? Sister Norma Pimentel, MJ (the Missionaries of Jesus), is showing, not telling, how to walk that very path with grace and humility. Fortunately for this writer, she took time out of her busy day to do a bit of telling, for a change.
Sister Norma is the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV), which includes the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, as one of its key initiatives. Now in its 11th year of operation since opening in June 2014, the center seeks to provide “a place for the countless men, women, children, and infant refugees to rest, have a warm meal, shower, and change into clean clothing as well as receive medicine and other supplies, before continuing on their journey,” according to its website, CatholicCharitiesRGV.org/get-help/humanitarian-respite-center.
For individuals and families who have traversed countless miles and survived the harrowing ordeal of migrating north, it’s a welcome pause for recuperation. “That’s what our center has become: a space that is safe for [immigrants] to feel human again and be OK,” says Sister Norma, whose voice is both soft-spoken and full of conviction for her mission.
Ultimately, the center is a reflection of God’s call for Sister Norma: to help restore dignity in those who have suffered much.
A Day in the Life
Rest. That’s not something that migrants are often able to afford, though we all need it to survive. The journeys north, no matter their origin, are fraught with difficulty, stress, and threats to life and limb from both the elements and human cruelty. Ironically, for someone who is at the helm of a ministry called the Respite Center, Sister Norma doesn’t rest much herself these days. She’s been waking up a little earlier than usual, around 3 a.m., since she’s raising a puppy to accompany her aging dog. Sister Norma has a bit of Franciscan energy to her.
Her days are frequently jam-packed with meetings, giving talks, and overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Respite Center and other CCRGV ministries (such as disaster relief, a ministry for the unhoused, and counseling services). In her work, she often finds herself on the other side of the border. Migrants typically need to work with government offices on both sides, despite lacking legal resources or knowledge about immigration law. In Reynosa, Mexico, a mere 15 miles south of McAllen, there are a number of government agency offices where migrants heading north mix with those who have been recently deported from the United States.
A people pleaser, Sister Norma recently took up another sister’s ministry in Reynosa after that sister’s community pulled out of the area. “She was really hurting because she was doing a beautiful ministry, bringing food to migrant families and helping obtain scholarships for the children [of migrants] to go to school,” says Sister Norma. “She came and visited me one day and asked, ‘Do you think you can continue this for me?’ And I say, ‘Sister Maureen, I will.’”
This is only one example of how Sister Norma has lived her life. It’s really part of a much greater arc, one that eventually led to a surprising callout from Pope Francis in 2015 (see sidebar below) and being named to TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Some have even referred to her as “the pope’s favorite nun.” But despite the recent acclaim, Sister Norma remains humble and true to her roots, which transcend borderlines and the shifting sands of history.
Between Two Worlds
Born in Brownsville, Texas, to Mexican immigrant parents, Sister Norma was accustomed to life being a “both-sides-of-the-border” experience. She attended kindergarten in Matamoros, Mexico, but then returned to grade school stateside after that. As such, she refers to herself as “an American citizen by chance.” Perhaps if many of us looked closer at our own family histories, we’d realize we’re not very different from Sister Norma—just a few generations removed.
“We must all connect with our own history, where we come from, and who we truly are,” she says. “It didn’t just happen on its own. We cannot survive on our own. Somebody has to have extended their hand, at some point, and said, ‘Allow me to help you.’ And that applies to all of us, whether it’s today or hundreds of years in the past.” Our ancestors’ immigrant stories, Sister Norma says, are also our stories, whether we know all the genealogical details or not. Recognizing that is an important step to humanizing migrants and opens us up to the possibility for compassion and mercy to enter our hearts.
From an early age, Sister Norma wanted to be an artist. She even started off higher education with a bachelor’s degree in fine art. But after graduation, she began to hear God’s call to religious life.
She describes the call as a shift from viewing God as a punishing authoritarian to a loving, nurturing God. Sister Norma joined the Missionaries of Jesus in 1978 at the age of 24 and went on to pursue a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. During her time at St. Mary’s, Sister Norma worked with migrants and refugees at Casa Oscar Romero, a foreshadowing of her work with CCRGV.
In order to better serve those on the margins, Sister Norma realized she needed some additional training and skills. So, in 1992, she enrolled at Loyola University (Chicago) in pursuit of a second master’s degree, this time in counseling and psychology. All the education and experience coalesced for Sister Norma when she returned to Brownsville to work with CCRGV as a counselor and its assistant director. Six years later, she was named the organization’s executive director.
In her first few years as executive director, Sister Norma says that working with 200 migrants in a day would have been considered busy. However, 10 years later, a massive wave of migrants, some of whom were unaccompanied minors, arrived at our southern border, and Sister Norma knew it was time to act.
Meeting a Felt Need
In 2014, the year the Respite Center opened, there was an estimated 80 percent increase from the previous year in the number of undocumented immigrants entering the United States. Around 50,000 unaccompanied minors were a part of this wave, the majority coming from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. When Sister Norma witnessed the prison-like conditions that children were experiencing in detention centers and noticed migrant families sleeping on sidewalks in McAllen, she took swift action.
She convinced the Diocese of Brownsville to allow her to use a small space at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, and McAllen city officials agreed to supply basic items such as cots and air-conditioning units. As donations poured in from all over the country, the numbers of migrants served quickly increased. In its first month of operation, the Respite Center worked with nearly 1,000 migrants a day, a massive uptick from when Sister Norma began her tenure.
Since then, continued support from the diocese, city officials, and donors has helped move the Respite Center into a larger space, which can better accommodate the surging numbers of migrants. It’s also strategically located across the street from the bus station in McAllen, which is where many migrants are dropped off by immigration officials after a court date is set to determine their status.
Along with meals, showers, and a chance to rest, the center helps migrants navigate their first steps in a new land—from arranging travel for those meeting family in faraway cities to helping migrants attend their necessary court appearances and fill out paperwork. It’s also a place where the trauma of migrating through dangerous environments alongside threats of violence from gangs and human traffickers can finally begin to be processed.
Sister Norma relates a story that happened the day before our interview, so it was clearly fresh in her mind. A young couple, the husband from Venezuela and the wife from Colombia, had been staying in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, as they awaited their court date for asylum in the United States. A local gang attempted to kidnap them, likely with the idea to sell them to human traffickers, but did not succeed. The couple were badly beaten as they escaped, and their only choice for survival was to cross the Rio Grande.
US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) picked them up on the banks of the river and rescued them. Then, as is often the case, CBP called Sister Norma to let her know there were some people she could help. Sister Norma is keen to point out the strong connection the Respite Center has with CBP, and the two organizations strive to help each other despite the legal jungle of immigration policies and procedures.
When the couple arrived at the Respite Center, Sister Norma says that the “husband was so hurt, and if anyone got close, he would just tremble, thinking you were going to hurt him. And his wife told him, ‘It’s OK. They’re good people; they’re not going to hurt us.’” The couple made a big step to a better life when they showed up at the center’s doors. But it all starts with being seen, which is the opposite of what many migrants experience in foreign lands.
‘They Are My Compass’
St. Francis of Assisi understood the importance of fixing our gaze on suffering, not turning away in disgust. His famous embrace of the leper was a major turning point in his life, and it essentially opened his eyes to the suffering—and beauty—he was previously blind to. When I mentioned that migrant people today are similar to the lepers of St. Francis’ time, Sister Norma nodded in the affirmative, going on to say, “If you look at who could be lepers today, they are precisely who [the late] Pope Francis spoke to us about, those on the peripheries, those who are marginalized, those who we simply choose to ignore or not see—the homeless people we walk by without noticing, someone who hopes that you turn around and offer them something you are blessed to have. At least a smile, you know?”
Now 11 years into this ministry, Sister Norma sees the same stumbling blocks that seem to prevent us from seeing migrants with eyes of compassion and having a fruitful, heart-driven dialogue about immigration. “I do find that politics is getting in the way,” says Sister Norma. “It’s almost as if politicians have found a way—a platform—to use this crisis and all this human suffering as something you’re either for or against.” This is a false—and dangerous—choice in her mind.
“It should be very much a part of who we are as people: defending life, protecting humanity, and making sure that we as a world, as humanity as a whole, can stand up and defend the most vulnerable and fragile people who are simply asking for a chance in life,” she says.
As politicians battle it out over immigration and punt the issue to each other like a political football, Sister Norma remains quietly, diligently working away at the periphery. Though politics certainly has an impact on immigration, and consequently on her ministry, it can’t be a focal point for her. “I cannot rely on anything [external] to determine any specific direction or for a sense of whether things are getting better or worse,” she says. “I continuously go back to grounding myself in the present and in what I do and why I do it. It’s the people themselves, the children, the families: They are my compass to know what I need to do in the moment.”
God has directed Sister Norma well in her life, nudging her along the way to lean in just a little more toward the broken places. And despite her busy days running CCRGV, the work of the Respite Center, and early morning puppy care, Sister Norma still paints. When she was a college undergraduate, she might have dreamed of creating commercial art for ad agencies in New York. But now when she paints, Sister Norma creates portraits of some of the people she’s served at the Humanitarian Respite Center, often donating the paintings to fundraisers.
Looking back on her life with some well-earned perspective, Sister Norma, ever the artist, reflects, “I think that Mother Teresa once said, and I totally agree with her, that we’re simply a pencil in God’s hands, and so I’m going to just let God use this pencil as best as I can.”
Sidebar: ‘Un Momento’
ABC held a virtual town hall with Pope Francis in August 2015 and invited people from the cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, and, oddly enough, McAllen, Texas, prior to his visit to the United States the following month. In McAllen, Sister Norma and a number of other women religious attended Sacred Heart Church, where the Humanitarian Respite Center first operated. In their shared native tongue of Spanish, the pope called out Sister Norma, saying, “Un momento. Quiero hablar conella” (“Just a moment. I want to speak with her”).
The moderator of the town hall had started kicking things off with an introduction, but the pope had other plans. Sister Norma stood a bit nervously (and who could blame her?) in front of the 9-foot screen with Pope Francis addressing her directly. “I want to thank you,”
said the pope. “And through you to thank all the sisters of religious orders in the [United States] for the work you have done and that you do in the United States. It’s great. I congratulate you. Be courageous. Move forward. I’ll tell you one other thing. Is it inappropriate for the pope to say this? I love you all very much.”
The affection the pope shared for the women religious in attendance became a viral moment, and it gave Sister Norma an unexpected level of visibility. But as soon as the town hall had concluded, she turned to her fellow religious sisters and others in attendance and said that it was thanks to them that she was recognized in the first place.
One month later, she got to meet Pope Francis in person when he visited New York City. As a token of her appreciation for his leadership and holy example, Sister Norma gifted the pope with one of her paintings of migrants, titled Tomasito (meaning “Tommy” in Spanish).
Digital Resources
• Sister Norma Pimentel meets Pope Francis on ABC.
• An article from the Franciscan Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the immigration crisis
