The Catholic Church in Mexico has an interactive map with the location of the shelters, soup kitchens and information centers for migrants that it manages throughout the country.
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The Church has 50 houses to welcome migrants, 7 dining rooms where their basic needs are taken care of; and 5 information modules from where they can be referred to legal advisors and where they are allowed to leave their contact information to receive help.
In June 2024, Father Héctor Julio López Vivas, who at that time was the executive secretary of the Episcopal Dimension of Pastoral Human Mobility (DEPMH) of the Mexican Episcopate Conference, explained that the initiative was born with the intention of having a tool so that whoever needs it can more efficiently locate the places where they can receive help “in a human way.”
“People, when they arrive at a house of the Catholic Church, feel safe, they feel protected and they know that all services are absolutely free,” he noted in an interview with ACI Prensa.
Father López Vivas encouraged migrants to trust the spaces of the Catholic Church: “we are not dependent on the government, we are not detention centers, we are humanitarian care centers.”
Map information is constantly updated.
Attention of the Catholic Church in numbers
Through a report from the Episcopal Dimension of Human Mobility Pastoral (DEPMH) of the Conference of the Mexican Episcopate, it was announced that in these places a total of 499,995 migrants were helped throughout 2023, thus marking “the year with the highest records” that have been reported.
According to the document, this increase occurred “as a consequence of the pressure from the United States government towards Mexico to contain migratory flows.”
“The immigration policies of the United States influenced the design and execution of the decisions that Mexico has to make to respond to its commitment to address migratory flows,” the report noted.
Originally published September 4, 2023. It has been updated for republication.
Diego López Colin
I am a graduate of Journalism at the Carlos Septién García School with experience in religious institutional communication. Since 2016 I have been writing for digital media and, since 2018, I have reported the most important news about Catholic events in Mexico for the EWTN news channel. ACI Prensa correspondent in Mexico since 2023.