Some people ask Sister Norma Pimentel why she helps immigrants.
“I don’t help immigrants,” she replies. “I help persons,” people who are hurting, suffering, being tortured and who share their stories with her.
The most important thing to offer someone in those circumstances is “your presence,” Sister Norma said. Because that brings them hope, brings God to them, because it shows them that they matter, “just by the fact that you … listen to them, say ‘I can,’ ‘I would like to listen to your story.’” And the transformation starts to happen, she said.
Oct. 19, Sister Norma was the featured speaker at the Ignatian Volunteer Corps’ Minneapolis and St. Paul 2023 Evening of Gratitude at St. Thomas More in St. Paul. Sister Norma spoke on the topic of “Immigration: Crisis in America.” That same afternoon, she spoke and took questions at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.
A daughter of Mexican immigrants, Sister Norma is executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, responsible for the charitable arm of the Diocese of Brownsville. She oversees ministries and services in the Rio Grande Valley through emergency assistance, homelessness prevention, disaster relief, clinical counseling, pregnancy care, food programs and humanitarian relief to immigrants.
Listed as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2020, Sister Norma has been praised by Pope Francis for her work with refugees and immigrants. The University of Notre Dame awarded her the Laetare Medal in 2018 in recognition of outstanding service to the Catholic Church and society.
After Sister Norma chose religious life, the archbishop in her area assigned her and other sisters to a shelter that welcomed families from Central America during a time of war there. Sister Norma said helping families was a good fit for her. People’s lives matter, she said.
“It was there that I discovered the stories, the horrible stories about how people were tortured,” she said. She recalled a young man who showed her his hands that told of how he was tortured. “I understood then that we need to be willing to step up and be that presence that says, ‘this is wrong.’”
Sister Norma believes the immigration crisis is not about immigrants, but rather the lack of response “to welcome them, to treat them as people, human beings — they’re just like us,” she said. “They are mother, father. They have parents; they have stories.” Sometimes, people in the United States are “so enclosed in our own world, living through our everyday, doing what we do.”
Helping immigrants is “how I think we can transform the world to be a world of love, a world of fraternity,” she said. “And yes, at night I do get tired. But I go home, and I feel that I’ve accomplished something good.”
Immigrants are not the crisis, Sister Norma said. “Instead, we need to reach out to them,” get to know them, ask them what they need, learn their story, she said.
That’s why the Church today is listening, Sister Norma said, and that’s what the synod on synodality at the Vatican is all about. “The Holy Spirit becomes present to all of us,” she said.
Sister Norma said she finds strength in the Eucharist; receiving it daily is “a form of nurturing that gives me guidance and strength.”
In Pope Francis’ words, the only way to eradicate hate is by radicalizing kindness, Sister Norma said; “being present with love and care, compassion and mercy.”
“Our only mission we have in this journey” is to eventually become beacons of hope, she said. “That can only happen if we radicalize kindness, gentleness, tenderness” in our homes, community, country and the world, she said. “This is who we are called to be.”
