The Missionaries of Charity is a Catholic centralised religious institute of consecrated life of Pontifical Right for women established in 1950 by Mother Teresa, now known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. As of 2023, it consisted of 5,750 members of religious sisters. Members of the order designate their affiliation using the order's initials, "M.C.". A member of the congregation must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and the fourth vow, to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor." Today, the order consists of both contemplative and active branches in several countries.
Marija Petković, also known as The Blessed Mary of Jesus Crucified Petković;, was the founder of the Catholic Congregation of the Daughters of Mercy. She was recognized by the Catholic Church as Venerable on 8 May 1998, and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 6 June 2003.
The Lower Rio Grande Valley, commonly known as the Rio Grande Valley or locally as the Valley or RGV, is a region spanning the border of Texas and Mexico located in a floodplain of the Rio Grande near its mouth. The region includes the southernmost tip of South Texas and a portion of northern Tamaulipas, Mexico. It consists of the Brownsville, Harlingen, Weslaco, Donna, Pharr, McAllen, Edinburg, Mission, San Juan, and Rio Grande City metropolitan areas in the United States and the Matamoros, Río Bravo, and Reynosa metropolitan areas in Mexico. The area is generally bilingual in English and Spanish, with a fair amount of Spanglish due to the region's diverse history and transborder agglomerations. It is home to some of the poorest cities in the nation, as well as many unincorporated, persistent poverty communities called colonias. A large seasonal influx occurs of "winter Texans" — people who come down from the north for the winter and then return north before summer arrives.
Saint Joseph Academy, sometimes referred to as St. Joe or SJA, is a private school conducted by the Marist Brothers of the Schools. It is located in Brownsville, Texas, United States, and serves junior high and high school students of the lower Rio Grande Valley and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The school is located in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville.
The Archdiocese of Galveston–Houston is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction—an archdiocese—of the Catholic Church in the United States. The archdiocese covers a portion of Southeast Texas, and is the metropolitan see of the ecclesiastical province covering east-Texas. The archdiocese was erected in 2004, having been a diocese since 1959 and the "Diocese of Galveston" since 1847. It is the second metropolitan see in Texas after the Archdiocese of San Antonio.
The Diocese of Brownsville is a Latin Church diocese in southeastern Texas in the United States.
The Diocese of Corpus Christi is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in southern Texas in the United States.
Norma V. Cantú is an American civil rights lawyer and educator. From 2021 to 2023, she served as chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the first Latina to hold the position.
John Joseph Fitzpatrick was a Canadian-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami in Florida from 1968 to 1971 and as the third bishop of the Diocese of Brownsville in Texas from 1971 to 1991.
Marilyn Lacey is the founder and executive director of Mercy Beyond Borders, a non-profit organization that partners with displaced women and children overseas to alleviate their poverty. A California native, Lacey has been a Sister of Mercy since 1966.
Daniel Ernesto Flores is an American Catholic prelate who has served as Bishop of Brownsville since 2009. He served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit from 2006 to 2009.
Mark Joseph Seitz is an American Catholic prelate who has served as Bishop of El Paso since 2013. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Dallas from 2010 to 2013.
Nuns on the Bus is a Catholic advocacy group in the United States. Their name comes from the fact that they tour the country on a bus.
Simone Campbell, is an American Catholic religious sister, lawyer, lobbyist and executive director of NETWORK. She belongs to the Sisters of Social Service. She is known as an outspoken advocate for social justice.
Christophe Louis Yves Georges Pierre is a French prelate of the Catholic Church. He is a cardinal who has been serving as the apostolic nuncio (ambassador) to the United States since 2016. Pierre previously served as apostolic nuncio to Mexico, Uganda and Haiti.
Jean Carolyn Guerrero is an American investigative journalist, author, and former foreign correspondent. She is the author of Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, winner of the PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers Prize, and Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, published in 2020 by William Morrow. Guerrero's KPBS series America's Wall won an Emmy Award. Her essay, "My Father Says He's a 'Targeted Individual.' Maybe We All Are", was selected for The Best American Essays anthology of 2019. She is a senior journalism fellow at the UCLA Latina Futures 2050 Lab.
Julia Le Duc is a Mexican photo journalist based in Matamoros, the Mexican town across the border from Brownsville, Texas. She has covered the American border crisis as a correspondent for La Jornada, and her photograph of the Salvadoran father and his 23-month-old daughter lying face down in the water of the Rio Grande after attempting to swim over to Brownsville became world news on 24 June 2019.
The Trump administration has detained migrants attempting to enter the United States at the United States–Mexico border. Government reports from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General in May 2019 and July 2019 found that migrants had been detained under conditions that failed federal standards. These conditions have included prolonged detention, overcrowding, and poor hygiene and food standards.
The state of Texas has a long history of immigration and immigration policy. The region that is now Texas was originally home to several Native American tribes. The first European immigrants arrived in the 1600s when the land was colonized by the French and the Spanish. Financial incentives created by the Mexican government brought many immigrants to Mexican Texas in the 1820s, mostly from slaveholding areas in the southern United States. This continued as significant illegal immigration to Mexico after 1830, when American migrants were banned.
ARISE Adelante is a nonprofit serving immigrant women and children in unincorporated colonias in South Texas. ARISE stands for A Resource In Serving Equality. It was founded by Roman Catholic sister Gerrie Naughton in 1987 in conjunction with women from the local community. ARISE assists new members for a while, but then they must agree to volunteer back to the community, working in a distributive leadership model. Its motto, from its founder, is "ARISE does not do for the people what the people can do for themselves." It is cosponsored by the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy of the Incarnate Word.
