Marists at the Border Return to Society’s Roots

The New York Times has called the border city of Brownsville, Texas “America’s Third World.” The Marist parish of San Felipe de Jesus is in the poorest section of Brownsville, an area known as Cameron Park.

It’s also where the Marist Fathers & Brothers live out a commitment to serve the unserved.

Fr. Mike Seifert baptizes a new member at San Felipe de Jesus.

Pastor Fr. Michael Seifert says that the average annual income for a family of four is $8,000. He recalls his introduction to the neighborhood in 1996. “It rained the night before we arrived, so the road was washed out. I was thirty minutes late for our first Sunday Mass because I kept losing my shoes in the mud,” he says.

Fr. Mike and Brother Albert Phillipp, FMS decided to organize the parish around its social needs. Fr. Mike explains, “We saw an elderly couple who were using outhouses because there were no sewers, a 28-year-old mother who died in the street after three clinics turned her away, and good people who were terrified of drug runners because there were no police.”

A successful ‘get-out-the-vote’ campaign turned out 80% of eligible voters and resulted in 15 miles of paved roads in the community, police, fire and ambulance coverage, street lights, parks and sanitation.

Parishioners of all ages enact the Christmas story.

The most pressing problem, though, was a lack of any health care system for poor people. “The ‘system’ is scraps of papers shared among social workers.” At San Felipe de Jesus, a parish nurse program and a weekend clinic staffed by medical student volunteers from the University of Texas at Galveston, eight hours away, have grown into a full-scale clinic and Frontera de Salud, a statewide oragnization of medical students.

Frontera forms partnerships with existing health centers to extend services in needy communities. Here, the missions of church, students and clinic have intertwined to bring health care to a community that otherwise had no access to it.

In the parish of San Felipe de Jesus, Fr. Mike has found mercy, compassion, and goodness. "Faith is lived at every level," he says. “Brother Albert and I said, ‘Loving our neighbor means looking after each other’ and the people took it from there.”

Fr. Mike Seifert with a first communicant.

Fr. Mike carries his ministry to his Mexican neighbors, who are 15 minutes and a world away. “At San Felipe, we have people who can’t pay the light and water bills; in Matamoros, the people don’t have light and water – and there is one priest for the 50,000 Catholics in the parish!” he says.

Fr. Mike and lay missioner Rosie Martinez run Bible study groups in Matamoros in homes perched on the side of a barely defunct garbage dump. “It makes the Gospel very interesting,” says Fr. Seifert. “How do you preach about Lazarus when everyone is Lazarus?”

Fr. Mike’s Brownsville is “a rich place,” he says. “It’s home for me. We didn’t come here as saviors. We’re called to create spaces of mercy where there is no mercy.”

<BACK TO TOP>