Praying is not Enough
A Catholic Priest Gets Riled Up
“The 2016 election woke me up,” says Father Misael Avila. “I don’t understand how our government can say that it ‘stands with the vulnerable, the aged, the infirm and the unborn’ when thousands of people are going to lose medical coverage and many seniors and poor people are going to be affected by the dramatic changes to Medicaid. I believe it’s not enough to pray.” A Mexican-born Catholic priest, soft spoken but resolute, Fr. Avila serves a bi-lingual community in the St. Frances of Rome Church in Riverbank in California’s Central Valley. Nearly half of the residents in the district are Latino: immigrants, farm workers, many undocumented or protected by DACA.
Father Avila is among the few priests willing to speak up about politics and the moral obligation of Catholics to participate in civic life. He understands that the voice of the people can best be heard through voting. In May 2018, before the California primary, he brought together a coalition of grassroots activists and priests from ten churches in the district to organize efforts to increase voter registration. Now, he is expanding his effort to include city leaders, congressional candidates, and clergy to roll up their sleeves to educate their constituents about the responsibility of living in a democracy.
“For the first time, I saw how I was supposed to serve my people,” Fr. Avila says about his new activism. With three months left until the November 6 election, his focus is laser sharp: helping to give a voice to his Latino parishioners. Historically, the Latino community in California historically has a low voter registration and participation rate, and that is precisely the population that needs to be turned out to vote in the midterm elections. In a recent speech in San Francisco, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the unexpected young winner of the Democratic primary in New York’s Fourteenth Congressional District, said that “we win when we expand the voter base.”
The potential Latino voters in CA-10 are mostly Catholic. The teachings of the church are very influential in their lives. Supporting the clergy in CA-10 in their campaign to encourage their Latino parishioners to vote to protect their community from the assault of the current administration, is critical.
Learn more about the US Conference of Bishops statement on Faithful Citizenship.
Sign up to talk to voters in CA-10.
