Abstract
This article argues for a reconsideration of the tradition of church sanctuary. First, I analyze the reality of Central American asylum seekers who are systematically denied protection in the United States. Second, using the earliest Christian references to sanctuary from the fourth century, I show that sanctuary was a religious and pastoral response to persecuted persons fleeing violence and death. Third, I trace the process that led to sanctuary’s disappearance from the Code of Canon Law in the late twentieth century, and argue that there is a need to reintroduce sanctuary as a religious principle and practice of the church.
In the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador), the threat of being killed is a common reality. In a series of interviews conducted by the Center for Migration Studies and Cristosal, Andrea, a young woman from Guatemala, narrates the following encounter with extortionists: They told me “You know, have you heard of the people that are found cut up into pieces here?” “Yes,” I answered. “Well, we’re the ones who have done that to them. If you don’t want this to happen to someone in your family, you’ll get us that money.” They said, “We know you have family in the States, and that you work over there [at the store].” And because of their threats, they knew where my family was, where my dad was, where my mother worked, and since they told me they could kill them, I told them, “Fine, I’ll see where I can get the money, just give me time and I’ll see where I can get it.” So, they told me they would give me an hour to get it. . . . I hung up and broke into a panic right there on my own.
1
Andrea gathered recorded evidence of her threats and decided to flee Guatemala to seek asylum in the US because the police in her own country could not protect her.
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Upon arriving at the US border she was apprehended and transported to a detention center. She spent months incarcerated while asking for asylum before being sent back: They interviewed me a month later. After they interviewed me, I waited another month, about 20 days or so, for them to give me an answer. Supposedly, they respond within eight days, but no, it took them almost a month. I was given the “Not credible.” They told me, “Your case is not credible, if you want you can appeal to the judge. Do you agree to an appeal?” I said, “Yes, I am going to appeal to the judge” . . . I had the interview with the judge almost 15 days later. The judge told me that my case was not credible, too. Then, I waited for them to deport me and I was there for three months, just waiting . . . The truth is that I do not know what it really consists of. I had my evidence, I had the audio recordings, I had all of that . . . There are a lot of racist people there, too . . . They toss you from one detention center to another, that day I felt bad, I even started to cry because they handcuffed me, they put my feet in shackles and from the waist down, too. That day I started to cry and the officer who was putting those things on me asked me, “Why are you crying?” “Because here, you are treated as a criminal and I am not a criminal.” So he said, “Maybe you’re not a criminal, but it’s for our safety.” Safety from what? We are not going to do anything. We are not criminals to be treated like this.
3
Andrea’s story provides a glimpse into the lives of asylum seekers who do not find protection either in Central America from their own governments or in the United States. This reality raises not only legal questions but also a question about the church’s responsibility for asylum seekers that fall into such a gap of protection. We must ask what the church’s responsibility is for protecting the life of asylum seekers who do not receive state protection and who are instead returned to the persecution and possibility of death from which they fled.
In three parts, this article argues for the tradition of church sanctuary as relevant and necessary amidst the gap of state protection for asylum seekers. The first part underscores the realidad that serves as the basis for the theological reflections that follow. This reality includes the US government’s strategic deterrents aimed at keeping Central Americans from reaching the US border, as well as its ongoing attempts to systematically deny them the possibility of asylum. In the 1980s, it was a network of hundreds of sanctuary churches and synagogues that saved the lives of countless Central Americans who were being denied asylum or complementary protections in the US. Church sanctuary served as a means of temporary refuge that generated critical time and space during which religious leaders and the broader community could work with and on behalf of asylum seekers, creating tangible hope for a resolution that protected their lives from violence and death. In order to better understand church sanctuary as a religious response to the crisis of asylum, I turn in part two to some of the earliest Christian references to persons seeking refuge and the protection of church leaders, to argue that at the core of the tradition of sanctuary is the protection of human life from violence and death. Despite the differences between the political context of the early church and now, what must remain constant is the theological affirmation that the church is a place and community that actively affirms and protects the life of the persecuted. For centuries this theological conviction was codified as the right of asylum or sanctuary in the church’s Code of Canon Law, and in the third and final section I analyze its disappearance from the Code. Although there is no longer a right for providing refuge in churches, the principle of sanctuary and the challenge of its practice remains, for the church is always tasked with serving as a sacramental presence in history of the salvific love and mercy of God.
The Failure to Protect Central Americans
Lack of Protection at Place of Origin
The threats to Andrea narrated at the opening of this article are widespread in a region where violence approximates that of a war zone. 4 Homicide rates, for example, despite their significant fluctuation over the past few years, nonetheless point to what the World Economic Forum refers to as the “world’s most murder-prone region.” 5 According to the latest available data from the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime, between 2014 and 2018 the average homicide rate in El Salvador was 72.8 per 100,000 people, in Guatemala 27.3, and in Honduras 51.5. For comparison, over the same period of time, the average homicide rate in the United States was 5 per 100,000 people and globally around 6 per 100,000. 6 For young men who are between 15 and 29 years of age, the homicide rate increases drastically to 296 per 100,000 in El Salvador, and to about 200 per 100,000 in Honduras. 7
Extortion networks have become a permanent feature of the social fabric in Central America. Led by the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 street gangs, in collusion with corrupt government officials that include the national, military, and municipal police forces, extortion extracts life and livelihood from all sectors of society. 8 Described as a “form of violent, omnipresent, criminally enforced taxation,” 9 extortion extends beyond cash, for currencies include any number of desired resources such as food, goods and services, or sexual labor. The non-optional, inter-generational participation in these extortion networks further reinforces the authority and governance of these criminal groups, not only over geographical territory, but also over the bodies and minds of citizens who are terrorized into paying, through multiple forms of symbolic and direct violence, what is called the “rent” or “war tax.” 10 Though refusing to pay is theoretically an option, such a choice can cost the life of a family member or of one’s self. A possible response is to leave one’s home, becoming internally displaced within one’s country. 11 This is what Andrea chose to do after receiving threats of dismemberment from her extortionists, for she fled to Guatemala City and lived there for several months hoping to receive state protection before attempting to seek asylum in the United States. 12
The number of internally displaced persons in Central America is increasing as persons seek the protection that the state has failed to provide. Despite the difficulty of tracking a phenomenon that by its very nature seeks to be invisible in light of the threats that drive it, it is estimated that in 2018 alone, there were 246,000 newly displaced persons in El Salvador due to threats of violence, 13 and that in 2019 the number increased to 454,000. 14 Reliable data for Honduras and Guatemala are not available, as until recently all three governments refused to recognize the reality of internal displacement in their countries. Some internally displaced persons who cannot find a durable solution to their threats within their country migrate to seek protection in other countries, often beyond the region to the United States. Given that close to 90% of Central American asylum applications are rejected in the US, these asylum seekers become deportees forced to find protection in Central America. 15 However, the dangers at home force a significant number of them to flee again, despite the dangers on the way. 16
Lack of Protection en Route
The journey through Mexico, in the words of a Guatemalan patient treated by Doctors Without Borders, can become “hell on earth.” 17 The extortion and kidnapping of Central Americans moving through Mexico has become a part of the criminal economy of the region, with the possibility of release costing thousands of dollars. 18 Taking their victims to so-called “safe houses” (casas de seguridad), criminal groups beat, strip, and extract phone numbers of relatives or friends, who are then contacted for the money. But even without such potentially traumatizing encounters, the prolonged exposure to the real threat of violence and the harsh conditions of walking across countries and constantly avoiding deportation adversely impacts the physical and mental health of migrants and asylum seekers. 19
The risks that migrants and asylum seekers face are directly connected to the deterrents the United States has established in collaboration with governments across the region to keep Central Americans contained in the Northern Triangle. Like concentric circles, arriving at the southern US border is a matter of evading a series of militarized borders by traveling through more remote and dangerous territories. 20 David Scott FitzGerald writes that “Central American governments are increasingly involved in caging their citizens at home and preventing transit through the region.” 21 An example of this caging is that of the Honduran military stopping newly formed “caravans” of Hondurans from leaving their own country in December 2020. 22 In El Salvador, a border patrol force was created in 2019 using agents from the National Police and funding from the United States. 23 The ceremonial deployment of this new border patrol took place at the very site where the first “caravan” of 1500 Salvadorans had departed to the United States in 2018. 24 In Guatemala, US border patrol agents and other personnel from the Department of Homeland Security expanded their presence in both the southern and northern Guatemalan border in 2019 in an attempt to decrease migration from that country and from the rest of Central America. 25 These caging practices are a harrowing echo to the 1980s when the Reagan administration began to systematically pressure governments in the region to keep Central Americans from reaching the US border to ask for asylum. 26
Mexico, as the last buffer before the southern US border, deports almost all Central Americans it apprehends, and in the past few years, it has deported more Central Americans than the United States. 27 Since 2014, Mexico’s Plan Frontera Sur has coordinated three concentric cordons that extend one hundred miles north from its southern border and aim to contain migrants and asylum seekers through the joint efforts of the Mexican navy, army, and federal police. 28 Enforcement is not limited to the border region, and takes place along what FitzGerald calls a “vertical frontier.” He writes that “Mexican authorities do not particularly care if an asylum seeker touches Mexican soil, because despite the increasingly generous formal law around asylum, the law is rarely applied in reality and is marked by extreme discretion.” 29 Essentially, it means that Mexico systematically and forcibly returns Central Americans to a real risk of persecution. 30 Asylum claims from Central Americans continue to increase in Mexico, 31 but given the violence in that country and possible family connections in the United States, most Central Americans still attempt to reach the US border.
Lack of Protection in the US
Asylum seekers are caught in a regime that deters, denies, and detains them, 32 with immigration courts serving the political interests of the state. The vignette with which this article opened provided a window into the experience of one asylum seeker who, despite real threats of persecution in Central America, was denied protection at the US border, was detained, deemed not credible in her appeal, and returned. Andrea’s experience highlights a broader pattern affecting Central Americans.
In December 2019, a group of leading immigrant legal service providers, including the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), among others, filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration for “using the immigration courts as a weapon against the asylum system and vulnerable migrants—to beat them back to places of danger—instead of lawfully adjudicating their claims based on their merits.” 33 The lawsuit demonstrates that although immigration courts are meant to fulfill the country’s commitments to protect persons fleeing persecution, under the control of the Attorney General about 40% of immigration courts have become “asylum free zones” where over 85% of all asylum cases are denied. These courts are located in San Diego, Phoenix, Houston, Miami, and in other cities across the US, with courts in Atlanta and El Paso having the highest asylum denial rates, at over 96%. 34 Furthermore, the immigrant legal service providers argue that through the enforcement-oriented performance metrics that were implemented for immigration judges in 2018, which among other benchmarks requires them to complete 700 cases per year, these judges are pressured to order the removal of asylum seekers instead of granting them asylum or other protections. This, they argue, is undermining judicial independence, entrenching systemic bias against asylum seekers, and limiting the possibility of asylum seekers having meaningful access to legal services. 35
As more families seek asylum together, there is also new legislation that targets them by forcing judges to abide by “rigid timelines that curtail important procedural protections.” 36 From 2018 to 2019, the number of “family units” apprehended at the southern border of the US increased from 77,800 to more than 432,000. 37 As Giovanni Bassu, the Regional Representative for Central America and Cuba of the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said, “The shift in the demographics of flight from the north of Central America reflects a grim reality on the ground in the countries of origin where entire families are under threat and flee together to find safety.” 38 Despite having the largest numbers of asylum applications in the US, Central Americans receive an increasingly smaller percentage of total asylum cases granted. From 2017 to 2019, the percentage of Salvadorans who received asylum decreased from 13.2 to 6.9, Guatemalans from 11.3 to 5.6, and Hondurans from 7.8 to 3.9. 39 The reality described up to this point illustrates that Central Americans are systematically deterred from arriving at the US, denied the credibility of their need for protection, detained in for-profit centers, 40 and returned to the violence from which they fled. 41 In the early 1980s, when Central Americans were also systematically rejected from asylum protections in the US, a small group of citizens began to stand in the gap of protection, giving rise to what became known as the sanctuary movement.
Sanctuary for Central Americans in the 1980s
The Refugee Act of 1980 signed under President Carter incorporated into domestic law the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, establishing an asylum process for refugees who would arrive at the US border and for those who were already within the United States.
42
Additionally, it codified the principle of nonreturn (non-refoulement) that prevents a country from forcibly deporting or returning refugees to a country where their life would be threatened.
43
However, a 1981 UN report argued that “though in theory any Salvadoran illegal entrant may apply for asylum, there appears to be a systematic practice designed to secure the return of Salvadorans, irrespective of the merits of their asylum claims.”
44
Faced with a system that refused to provide asylum or other legal protections to Salvadorans and Guatemalans apprehended at the border, congregants from various faith communities in Tucson, Arizona began to help these refugees avoid capture at the border while also helping to transport them across the country to other churches that were willing to protect them from being returned to danger.
45
Jim Corbett, who throughout the 1980s played a key role in the sanctuary movement, made the following statement to the National Council of Churches in 1981: If the churches continue to ignore the Salvadorans’ desperate need to avoid capture, the American public will continue to see the refugees, rather than their persecutors, as illegals. . . . Much more than the fate of the undocumented refugees depends on the religious community’s participation and leadership in helping them avoid capture. If the right to aid fugitives from government-sponsored terror is not upheld in action by churches—regardless of the cost in terms of imprisoned clergy, punitive fines, and exclusion from government-financed programs—the loss of many other basic rights of conscience will certainly follow. No one who lives in this century can have missed that lesson.
46
For Corbett and others involved with the sanctuary movement, people of faith and goodwill did not just have a moral imperative to protect persons whose lives were threatened if returned to their country, but through their civilian or “civil initiative” they could contribute to holding the government accountable to the international standards meant to protect refugees, which they believed the government was violating. 47 The hope was that, in time, when asylum cases were no longer arbitrarily denied because of the state department’s political interests, qualified lawyers could help Salvadorans and Guatemalans apply for asylum and have a fair hearing. 48
Fr. Paul Crowley, SJ was among the hundreds of religious leaders who actively stood in the gap of protection facing Central Americans in the 1980s, helping them avoid capture at the US–Mexico border and accompanying them to sanctuary churches and communities. If Andrea’s story narrated at the beginning illustrates the contemporary need for asylum, a brief glimpse into the experience of the late theologian is a reminder of the many ordinary witnesses who practiced what Pope Francis calls “a love capable of transcending borders.”
49
In 1988 during a visit to El Salvador, fellow Jesuits asked Crowley to accompany Vicente to the US border because his life was in danger and his wife and four children had already been killed.
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A trip that was supposed to take a few days and a couple of planes to Mexico City and then to Tijuana quickly became a month-long journey of faith in the midst of evading Mexican federal police and eventually US border patrol. In Mexico, they traveled about 2,000 km in buses, stayed at various churches, slept outside in the cold, picked up a family of two Salvadoran women and three young girls who also needed to find refuge in the US, and finally, right before attempting to cross into the US on May 1, 1988, the group prayed together in a small chapel along the US–Mexican border to ask for God’s protection. Later that day, they all made it to a sanctuary church in Tucson, and eventually Crowley and Vicente made their way to Los Angeles to a Jesuit-affiliated sanctuary community for Central American refugees. After the month-long journey, Fr. Paul Crowley wrote: More important than all of these experiences and aftereffects, I feel that I’ve been changed. Something has happened, the full implications of which I am still figuring out. This experience has touched me at the core of my being. It has forced me, as few other experiences have, to take possession of my own personhood, perhaps because these weeks have been partly concerned with saving the life of another person. The experience of these weeks has expanded my North American horizon to include an entire continent and its suffering people. Furthermore, these weeks have forced me to confront and accept the grace and love of God in ways that I never could have anticipated or planned. It has been a trial and a blessing.
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Crowley’s reflection touches on a fundamental dimension of sanctuary then and now—it has to do with saving the life of another person and having one’s life transformed in the process. It is an experience that in the midst of shared trials, opens persons and communities unto the mysterious and salvific grace of God.
Church Sanctuary—A Religious and Pastoral Response to the Lack of Protection
Church sanctuary is a religious and pastoral response to the need for protection from violence and death. In this section, I analyze some of the earliest Christian discussions regarding church sanctuary, mostly from the latter part of the fourth century. These discussions illustrate the diverse ways in which this ecclesial tradition was invoked with the participation of ecclesiastical leaders of the time, even before it had been formally codified within the church or the Roman Empire. While the fourth-century bishops could theoretically presume upon ancient Greek and Roman traditions of sacred spaces as places of refuge in their practice of sanctuary, 52 their confrontations with imperial authorities illustrate that their protection of persecuted persons was not carried out because it was necessarily permitted, but because it was the church’s religious and pastoral duty to intercede. 53 Despite the vast differences that exist between the church in the fourth century and the realities of the twenty-first century, the need for protection remains a constant, as do the political and legal tensions to which church sanctuary gives rise.
The earliest reference to church sanctuary comes from the Council of Serdica. Held in 343, it gathered about 170 bishops from the Eastern and Western part of the empire who attempted to reconcile political, ecclesiastical, and theological conflicts.
54
Part of the tension had to do with Athanasius of Alexandria and other bishops who had been deposed in 335 by bishops who sympathized with Arius. The Western bishops who supported the Nicene Creed had reinstated Athanasius and the other deposed bishops, leading to a back-and-forth struggle that the Council sought to address. Most of the canons that resulted from the Council dealt with disciplinary matters of the episcopate such as excommunication, bishops going to the imperial court, the right of appeal of bishops, and refuge for bishops/clergy who were persecuted for their theological positions. For example, canon twenty-one states that if anyone is forcefully and unjustly expelled [from his church] because of [his] doctrine or catholic confession or defense of the truth, fleeing peril, guiltless and devout, comes to another city, whether bishop or presbyter or deacon, he shall not be forbidden to remain there until he can either return [to his church] or has received remedy for his injury; for it is hard for him who has suffered persecution not to be received.
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Athanasius of Alexandria, whose life was marked by various forced exiles and flights from threats of violence, is an example of the kinds of situations to which these canons referred.
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It is within this broader context of determining ecclesiastical norms for bishops, and for their interactions with each other and with the imperial courts, that we also find the earliest references to church sanctuary and the responsibly of bishops to intercede for condemned and persecuted persons. Canon eight states that a bishop should make his intercession [for those] who are oppressed by disadvantages in life or the afflicted widow or exploited orphan . . . [and] since it often happens that those who suffer a wrong or who as offenders are condemned to exile or an island or at any rate receive some sentence flee to the mercy of the Church, they are to be given relief, and forgiveness is to be asked for them without hesitation.
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To “flee to the mercy of the Church” is arguably the first ecclesiastical reference to church sanctuary within what the late theologian Hamilton Hess calls an “ecclesiastical rule of law” 58 that would eventually become codified into the church’s canon law in the following centuries. 59 The text conveys the conviction of these early prelates that the tradition of refuge should encompass a wide scope of who could seek the church’s intervention. A bishop’s duty to “give relief” was directed towards persons oppressed by any number of social, economic, or political reasons. Particular attention was given to those who had actually been condemned to exile. In the fourth century, exile could serve as an alternative to the death penalty, especially for the more privileged classes; thus, a condemnation to exile was a forced displacement to avoid death. 60 In such cases, whether it was because the accused suffered a wrong or because they were in fact offenders, if they fled to the church, the church was tasked with seeking their forgiveness before the emperor “without hesitation.” 61
The Council of Serdica sought to discipline bishops who frequented the imperial court for “ambitious” and “self-serving petitions,” or as canon eleven says, who “wishe[d] to climb with ambition more than to please God.” 62 However, if the matter concerned the life of those in need, then the bishop was not only encouraged to go to the imperial court but was obliged to do so. Hess writes that “although the presentation of frequent and ambitious petitions is condemned, a clear distinction is drawn between the evil of this and the propriety of intercession for the poor and the oppressed and for widows and orphans.” 63 That those who were “oppressed by disadvantages in life,” who were “afflicted,” and who were “exploited,” were placed together with the “condemned” in the canon’s instructions for bishops points not only to the variety of persons who found themselves in need of the intercession of bishops before courts, but perhaps also to the way in which such categories are often interrelated in the vicissitudes of life.
Whereas the Council of Serdica did not provide specific details about church sanctuary, later patristic writings offer insight into the practice and into the theological understanding of this tradition. In Gregory of Nazianzus’s funeral oration for his friend Basil, the Bishop of Caesarea who died in 379, we find an early example of a bishop protecting a sanctuary seeker who fled to the church altar in order to flee a judge’s order of forced marriage. Gregory writes, “She fled to the holy table and made God her protector against outrage.” 64 He then rhetorically asks, as though in a courtroom, what any bishop or priest ought to have done in a similar situation: “Was it not his duty to act in her defense, to receive her, to protect her, to raise his hand on behalf of the mercy of God and the law which commands respect for the altar? Was it not his duty to be willing to do and suffer all rather than take against her any inhuman measure, and outrage the holy table and the faith of her supplication?” 65 At the core of Gregory’s dramatic retelling was the affirmation that to take refuge at “the holy table” was to take refuge in God.
His words point to a sacramental relationship between sanctuary and the mercy of God made manifest in that place through the church, and more particularly through the bishop who was to serve on behalf of God as God’s instrument for her protection. To hand over the one who took refuge at the altar was to carry out an “inhuman measure” that prioritized the bishop’s self-preservation over the needs of the persecuted person. To reject the sanctuary seeker was to betray both the sacramental presence of God at the altar of mercy and the faith of the one who sought it. Gregory adds that after Basil’s noncooperation with the judge’s orders, the judge began to persecute him and “ordered him to appear in court and justify himself . . . as if he were a man condemned.” 66 It is clear that associating with condemned and persecuted persons could lead to a bishop’s own persecution and perhaps condemnation by the empire. Gregory’s narration of Basil’s defense of church sanctuary is one of the earliest Christian references to the specificity of the altar as a site of refuge and protection for the persecuted. 67 Sacramentally, the life of the bishop and the life of those seeking sanctuary in churches were interdependent, bound together before the mercy of God.
In the 390s, we find a few more references to bishops attempting to protect, within the church, the life of persecuted persons. The first is an account that concerns Ambrose of Milan, who around 396 is reputed to have unsuccessfully tried to protect a certain Cresconius who “took refuge at the altar of the Lord.” 68 According to Paulinus’s Life of Saint Ambrose, “the holy bishop with the clerics who were present at the time gathered around to defend him, but the multitude of soldiers . . . prevailed over the few.” Paulinus relates that the event left the bishop “prostrate before the altar of the Lord,” weeping in lamentation. In a dramatic fashion that arguably is meant to convey the sacredness of the tradition of sanctuary, and the sanctity of Ambrose as well, the soldiers who forcefully removed Cresconius were attacked by leopards later that day during a show of wild animals that were on display in the city of Milan. While one can raise questions about the historical accuracy of Paulinus’s hagiographical work, written a couple of decades after Ambrose’s death at the request of Augustine of Hippo, the account nonetheless illustrates the contested nature of the tradition of sanctuary, and the bishop’s central role in upholding it.
John Chrysostom’s homilies from 399 also provide an account of the defense of those who take refuge in the church. Two of his homilies concern Eutropius, a consul to Emperor Arcadius, who after his political downfall and condemnation to exile took refuge in the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople.
69
Chrysostom points out that Eutropius had legally fought to eliminate the church’s sanctuary practices, only to then find himself the beneficiary of what he previously persecuted. In his first homily Chrysostom says to Eutropius: “In your misfortune I do not abandon you, and now when you are fallen I protect and tend you. And the church which you treated as an enemy has opened her bosom and received you into it.”
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In a second homily on this matter, which uses highly symbolic language, Chrysostom adds details of the firmness with which the church stood when soldiers attempted to forcefully apprehend Eutropius. Although the church did not cooperate with the soldiers’ requests, Eutropius surrendered shortly thereafter by leaving the church and was eventually beheaded: A few days ago the church was besieged: an army came, and fire issued from their eyes, yet it did not scorch the olive tree; swords were unsheathed, yet no one received a wound; the imperial gates were in distress, but the church was in security. And yet the tide of war flowed hither; for here the refugee was sought, and we withstood them, not fearing their rage. And wherefore prithee? Because we held as a sure pledge the saying “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” And when I say the church I mean not only a place but also a plan of life: I mean not the walls of the church but the laws of the church. When you take refuge in a church, do not seek shelter merely in the place but in the spirit of the place. For the church is not wall and roof but faith and life. . . . Ye were present on that day, and ye saw what weapons were set in motion against her, and how the rage of the soldiers burned more fiercely than fire, and I was hurried away to the imperial palace. But what of that? By the grace of God none of those things dismayed me.
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Chrysostom’s vivid imagery locates sanctuary and the refugee seeking protection explicitly within a horizon of life and death that echoes the experience of war. By the end of the fourth century, the conflict between refuge in churches and the empire’s legal justice enforced through armed forces was on full display.
For Chrysostom, the protection of the sanctuary seeker resided not so much in the church walls that could demarcate the sanctuary space, but in the embodied community of faith that could enflesh it peacefully (“the olive tree”), with a sense of security in God and without fear of the soldiers. His recalling of Jesus’s promise to Peter (Matt 16:18)—that death, “the gates of hell,” shall not prevail—makes of church sanctuary an embodied memorial enactment of that salvific promise that life shall prevail, and that the church has been entrusted with upholding in practice that fundamental principle of faith. It is also a promise that the church, if faithful to Christ, will always be marked by a confrontation with whatever seeks to deny life and make of it a living hell. Death and life, condemnation and salvation, the reign of war and the reign of God were all implicated in the struggle to protect persons seeking refuge in Chrysostom’s fourth-century context, and they are all implicated now.
This historical review has illustrated two key points. First, the church looked at the status of the individual in terms of the oppressions, persecutions, and condemnations that threatened their life and humanity and saw its responsibility as one of historically manifesting the mercy of God through their defense. And second, the church consistently rejected the view that it could carry out this religious mission without ecclesiastical leaders risking themselves and facing possible consequences before the empire’s courts for faithfully upholding the tradition of sanctuary.
In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, the practice of church sanctuary became officially regulated within Christendom, and it was later codified as a right or privilege of the church. 72 Its promulgation within the Theodosian Code ensured that sanctuary would continue into the medieval period as both ecclesiastical councils and civil legislation acknowledged its existence and practice. For example, references to the privilege of sanctuary are found in key legal texts such as Gratian’s Decretum in the twelfth century, 73 or in King Alfonso X’s Siete Partidas, a thirteenth-century Castilian legal code that was later promulgated in various forms throughout the Spanish empire and its colonies. 74 In the sixteenth century at the Council of Trent, although the topic of sanctuary was not directly addressed, it is indirectly implied in the Council’s documents dealing with “the immunities, liberty, and other rights of the church.” 75 As the right of sanctuary was increasingly curtailed by civil authorities in the post-Reformation context, 76 the practice of sanctuary began to disappear.
In the next section, I show that by the late twentieth century, ecclesiastical leaders questioned the necessity and validity of references to sanctuary in the Code of Canon Law, paving the way for the erasure of this tradition within the church’s code. The many centuries of church sanctuary as a recognized right within empires led the church to depend too much on the legal recognition of this tradition for its existence, eroding its early Christian roots as a religious and pastoral responsibility that transcended civil law. In light of the gaps of protection examined in section one, I suggest an ecclesial reconsideration of the need for this principle and practice.
The Need for the Principle and Practice of Church Sanctuary
Sanctuary formally existed within canon law until the early 1980s when references to it disappeared. The current Code established in 1983 does not explicitly prohibit it, but it no longer mentions its existence. The last official acknowledgement of sanctuary within the church’s canon law is the 1917 Code, which in canon 1179 said: “Churches enjoy the right of asylum, which implies that criminals seeking refuge therein may, except in case of urgent necessity, not be taken out without the consent of the Ordinary or at least of the rector of the church.” 77 After many centuries of limitations on who could seek sanctuary, the primary reference for this practice had become criminals or those accused of a crime.
The 1917 Code recognizes that persons in sanctuary may be removed “in case of urgent necessity” without the consent of the ecclesiastical leader. While theoretically this clause is an acknowledgement that the state can forcefully remove someone from sanctuary, as we saw in the example of Ambrose of Milan in 396, the clause also serves as a further means of protection of the person who takes refuge in the church. For example, one commentary interprets the wording of canon 1179 in the following manner: “In cases of urgent necessity no permission is required [to remove someone without the bishop’s consent]. Such a case would be that of threatening mob violence, from which officials might save the criminal by quick action.” 78 The commentary assumes that the state’s motives for removing someone from sanctuary would be in furtherance of their life, to protect them from the possibility of violence or death, rather than to expose them to such threats.
The process of revising the Code of Canon Law began with Pope John XXIII and then Pope Paul VI. It was concluded under Pope John Paul II who, as John Coughlin writes, “desired that the church’s law reflect the ecclesiology of Vatican II.” 79 When in 1971 a commission gathered to discuss canon 1179 of the 1917 code, the head of the commission advised eliminating the reference to the right of asylum in churches. The reasons given were that civil society no longer recognized the right and because it was no longer invoked by sanctuary seekers. 80 In agreement, others on the commission added that civil laws increasingly guarantee and defend the rights of citizens, even those of criminals, because penalties have been “humanized.” 81 In contrast, some members of the commission argued that even if in practice the right of asylum or sanctuary within churches was not recognized by civil society, the affirmation of such a principle before civil society depended on whether the canon was suppressed or retained within canon law. 82 These members of the commission even suggested revising the canon in order to more explicitly transform sanctuary in churches into something similar to the diplomatic immunity of embassies, with clear processes for requesting it. The discussions actually led to new wording for the canon, and with an eight to one vote in favor, reference to sanctuary was kept at this stage of the Code’s revision. Furthermore, the reference to cases of “urgent necessity” for extracting someone from sanctuary was removed, arguably to strengthen the principle of sanctuary and its possible practice. Thus, the temporary canon in the early 1970s affirmed that whoever flees to a church or sacred place to obtain asylum is not to be removed without the consent of the competent ecclesiastical authority. 83
The former canon 1179 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law became canon 14 in the working draft that was sent out for consultation to various episcopal conferences, dicasteries, and other church entities in 1977. When in 1979 a commission comprising both new and previous members of the 1971 group gathered for a second stage of revisions, canon 14 was simply eliminated. The primary reasons provided by the commission were that civil law does not recognize the right of asylum in churches and that the church does not have a need of its existence. 84 The previous commission’s insights on the importance of affirming the principle of sanctuary before civil society, even if civil law did not recognize its practice as a right, came to an end.
The final stages of the process that led to the disappearance of sanctuary from canon law were marked more by a reference to legal rights than by an understanding of sanctuary as a religious and pastoral responsibility for persons in need of protection. To a degree, this is understandable, since episcopal conferences, dicasteries, and other church sectors that provided feedback to the commission may not have been familiar with sanctuary practices as an ongoing living tradition in the twentieth century. After all, aside from examples such as the village of Le Chambon-sur Lignon in France or the Assisi Network in Italy during World War II, 85 or the late 1960s and early 1970s declarations of sanctuary in the United States for civilian and military personnel opposed to serving in the Vietnam War, 86 the practice of church sanctuary was largely absent from collective consciousness until the 1980s sanctuary movement for Central Americans. In the perceived absence of a living tradition, and without legal standing in the modern nation state, maintaining references in canon law to the right of asylum in churches could in fact seem irrelevant and antiquated.
The distinction made in the 1971 commission could have allowed for omitting mention of the civil legal right of asylum in churches while still affirming the principle of asylum in churches, since arguably one depends more on legal recognition and the other on religious and pastoral duty. In fact, the 1971 wording does away with references to a right of asylum for it simply says that those who flee to the church to obtain asylum are not to be removed, thus recognizing that such a civil legal right does not exist in the modern nation state. On a related point, some of the members in the commissions expressed their positive assessment of civil laws and the belief that penalties had been humanized, even for criminals, as reasons for why references to church asylum were no longer needed. In light of the information presented in section one, which is but a narrow focus on a much broader reality affecting asylum seekers globally, 87 it is necessary to discern whether in fact church asylum is no longer needed, not as a civil legal right, but as a religious and pastoral principle and practice that welcomes and protects those who flee to the church. 88 In light of Vatican II’s ecclesiological vision of the church as the people of God who make the griefs and anxieties, especially of the poor and afflicted, its own, 89 and of its sacramental nature as a sign and instrument of God’s salvific presence throughout history, 90 the church’s contemporary need of and for sanctuary becomes a living question that the 1979 commission silenced.
As we saw in the previous section, in the earliest Christian references to sanctuary one encounters a relationship between refuge and the church’s identity and mission. When sanctuary seekers located themselves by the altar of Christian worship, a sacramental logic was invoked for it was to God to whom they ultimately appealed in the midst of their threatened humanity. 91 Bishops were to embody the church’s religious duty to intercede for those in need of protection, even to the point of their own condemnation, for at stake was the veracity of the church as a historical mediation, a sacrament, of the mercy of God.
In the United States, Roman Catholic bishops and clergy are generally hesitant to associate with the church’s tradition of sanctuary, though they do uphold measures aimed at keeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) out of churches. For example, in a letter sent to the clergy of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2017 during raids ordered by the Trump administration, Cardinal Blase Cupich emphasizes that if ICE wants to enter a church and “if they do not have a warrant and it is not a situation that someone is in imminent danger, tell them politely they cannot come on the premises.”
92
Even if ICE has a warrant, the letter instructs clergy to review the warrant and to contact the Archdiocese’s legal counsel before allowing ICE onto the premises.
93
The letter goes on to say: We have not named our churches as “sanctuaries” solely because it would be irresponsible to create false hope that we can protect people from law-enforcement actions, however unjust or inhumane we may view them to be. Moreover, immigration law does impose criminal penalties and fines for anyone who conceals, harbors or shields from detection, in any place, an alien who has come to, entered or remains in the United States in violation of the law.
94
The statement that sanctuary creates false hope is found in various bishops’ statements regarding sanctuary and is not unique to the cardinal’s letter. 95 The false hope particularly refers to the notion that the church can ultimately protect a sanctuary seeker from government forces. As was explained earlier, church sanctuary is never a guarantee of protection. However, it has served—historically and currently—as a possible means of protection from violence and forced exile. 96 Whereas in the early church the condemnation to exile that led someone to seek sanctuary entailed a forced displacement from their home, now persons seek sanctuary so as to avoid a second exile, a forced return to a place from which they fled, too often by necessity. 97
Persons who seek sanctuary, who have endured multiple forced displacements, who bear in their flesh the chronic and toxic stress that comes with endless permutations of a sense of impermanence, are well aware that armed officers of the state can forcefully enter and extract them from the church. More importantly, however, they also know that the intercession the church can provide through its offer of refuge can make a difference as they receive the creative means of time, place, and, above all, the witness of a community with whom they can legally struggle for protection. Central Americans and other asylum seekers who have been allowed to wait for their asylum adjudications within the United States, and who will be denied in the coming years by the legal system described in section one, will likely become the targets of ICE in future years. Will the church stand in the gap of protection with those who flee to the church?
The cardinal’s letter rightfully invokes immigration law and its penalties and fines for anyone, and more particularly, for clergy or bishops who conceal, harbor, or shield a person whose presence in the United States is a violation of this law. The fears are legitimate. However, one must always ask why a law has been violated. It is reasonable to assume that no one wants to bear the burden of “illegality” or “criminality”—neither the person who crosses borders seeking protection nor the person who crosses the law in providing it. 98 Yet, as the cardinal also writes in a piercing letter against the Trump administration’s family separation policy in 2018: “Scripture tells us that God requires no one to follow unjust laws,” and that “every so often, history presents circumstances that test the soul of a nation. We are living in one of those moments. Whatever this nation of immigrants does for the least of these brothers and sisters of ours will define us for decades to come, in the world’s eyes, and in God’s.” 99 To his words can be added those of John Chrysostom after he was taken away by soldiers for refusing to hand over the sanctuary seeker: “I was being forcibly dragged away, but I suffered no insult from the act; for there is only one real insult, namely sin: and should the whole world insult thee, yet if thou dost not insult thyself thou art not insulted. The only real betrayal is the betrayal of the conscience: betray not thy own conscience, and no one can betray thee.” 100 Although the church cannot invoke sanctuary as a civil legal right, the fundamental principle of sanctuary as a religious and pastoral response to those who seek refuge in the church must not be forgotten.
Some Christian denominations have begun to codify the principle and practice of sanctuary. 101 The legislative bodies of the Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian churches, among others, have institutionalized the possibility of providing church sanctuary as an expression of their pastoral and religious commitment. 102 At a minimum, their bishops or ecclesiastical leaders have left the door open for local congregations to decide where they stand in regards to providing sanctuary if someone seeks refuge in their congregation. The Episcopal Church has even developed sanctuary insurance for parishes (coverage of up to $100,000 at an annual cost of $100) in order to address the costs of legal defense that may arise as the local community of faith works with and on behalf of the sanctuary seeker(s) toward a resolution that protects their life and the integrity of their family. 103 In Germany, there are Roman Catholic parishes and religious communities practicing church asylum/sanctuary for persons threatened with deportation to danger. 104 Mother Mechthild Thürmer, a Benedictine abbess, faces possible legal consequences for providing refuge in her monastery to asylum seekers with orders of deportation. 105 As in the United States, there are risks for embracing this religious tradition. 106 However, fidelity to God and neighbor, and the sacramental horizon that holds them together, must lead the church to become a living sanctuary—a holy place and a place of refuge—that communicates unequivocally the merciful love of God.
Conclusion
The article began with Andrea, a Guatemalan woman who sought asylum at the US–Mexico border because she believed, given the threats to her life and the recorded evidence she possessed, that she could find protection in the United States. She was deemed “not credible” and, despite her appeal, was returned to the violence from which she fled. Part one analyzed the lack of protection that asylum seekers from Central America face within their countries and their countries’ attempts to contain them within the region. Using Mexico as a buffer, the United States continues to create deterrents to prevent asylum seekers from reaching the US border so that they cannot ask for asylum either at the border or within the United States. In the 1980s, the lack of asylum for Salvadorans and Guatemalans seeking refuge led churches and people of goodwill to stand in the gap of protection by providing sanctuary. Part two showed that in the earliest Christian discussions of the topic, which appeared in the fourth century, sanctuary was understood as a religious and pastoral response to persons who fled to the church. Bishops in particular were to intercede before the empire on behalf of sanctuary seekers. At the time, sanctuary was not yet a codified right of the church within the empire. Part three analyzed how references in canon law to the right of asylum/sanctuary in churches came to an end in the late twentieth century. It argued that the principle of sanctuary could have been retained in canon law, as was suggested by the 1971 commission, while omitting mention to a civil legal right that no longer holds authority within the modern nation state.
As asylum seekers continue to face orders of deportation to regions where they did not originally find protection, some flee to the church to seek refuge. Pope Francis writes that “the Church, while respecting the autonomy of political life, does not restrict her mission to the private sphere. On the contrary, ‘she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines’ in the building of a better world, or fail to [reawaken the spiritual forces that engender all life in society].” 107 The religious tradition of sanctuary bears a powerful spiritual force, and every sanctuary seeker is an invitation for the church to remember its own tradition as it also reawakens it in the broader civil society.
There are various implications that emerge from the pressing reality examined in section one in relation to the ancient tradition of church sanctuary and its contemporary manifestations. The first is that of ecclesiastical leaders reconsidering the absence and possible (re)introduction of the principle of sanctuary within the church’s legislation. Official recognition of this religious tradition within canon law would support local faith communities who discern a call to stand in the gaps of protection that threaten asylum seekers.
Beyond the possible codification of sanctuary within the Roman Catholic Church, there is a need to continue to research the ways that church sanctuary opens new horizons for ecclesiology and its sacramental foundations. For example, because in its traditional form sanctuary entails persons taking refuge and living within the boundaries of the church property until they are forcefully removed or until a resolution is found for their persecution, there is a very real convergence of socio-political concerns and sacramental and liturgical life. In the practice of sanctuary, worship of God becomes inseparable from the accompaniment and protection of persons who dwell within the same space and time marked for communal praise. Rather than engaging with the church’s mission outside of the space where formal liturgy happens, the mission becomes one with what the church celebrates. For a community of faith, this convergence has the potential to concretize and transform their understanding of the sacramental nature of the church and its mark of holiness. Vatican II’s assertion that the church is a sacrament of salvation in and for the world also serves as a capacious ecclesiological principle for further developing the relationship between the practice of sanctuary and the church’s nature and mission. An ecclesiology attuned to the needs of protection of displaced and persecuted persons would demonstrate that those who seek the mercy of the church are in the heart of the church, are the reason for the church’s existence, and that it is through them that the church finds its own life and salvation. 108
Footnotes
1.
2.
To seek asylum is to seek forms of international protection afforded to refugees because they cannot find these protections in their own country. Not all who migrate are refugees or asylum seekers. The UNHCR describes refugees and asylum seekers as “people outside their own country of origin because of feared persecution, conflict, violence, or other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order.” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), “‘Refugees’ and ‘Migrants’—Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ),” August 31, 2018, 
.
3.
Center for Migration Studies and Cristosal, 24.
4.
5.
8.
9.
The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 1.
10.
The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 4, 21, 35.
11.
12.
Center for Migration Studies and Cristosal, 22.
13.
15.
16.
Médecins Sans Frontières, 15.
17.
Médecins Sans Frontières, 18.
18.
19.
Médecins Sans Frontières, 19–22.
20.
21.
David Scott FitzGerald, Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 156, 146.
22.
23.
25.
Geneva Sands, “US Border Patrol agents will deploy to Guatemala to train ‘side-by-side,’” CNN, May 31, 2019.
26.
FitzGerald, Refuge beyond Reach, 134.
27.
28.
29.
FitzGerald, Refuge beyond Reach, 157.
30.
31.
32.
T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore, The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 6.
34.
35.
36.
38.
39.
40.
41.
The Biden administration has begun to issue executive orders, however limited, to redress some aspects of the previous administration’s approach to asylum seekers arriving at the border or already within the United States. For an overview of what these executive orders are meant to accomplish and the legal obstacles they are facing, see American Immigration Lawyers Association, “Featured Issue: First 100 Days of the Biden Administration,” March 2, 2021, .
42.
For an analysis of US immigration law concerning refugees, with particular emphasis on the 1980 Refugee Act in relation to the 1980s sanctuary movement, see Ignatius Bau, This Ground Is Holy: Church Sanctuary and Central American Refugees (New York: Paulist, 1985), 55–74.
43.
For a history of the principle of nonreturn and the need for a rethinking and expansion of this principle in light of persons displaced across the world and in need of international protection, see Aleinikoff and Zamore, 61–69.
44.
45.
Jim Corbett, Sanctuary for All Life (Berthoud, CO: Howling Dog, 2005), 68–81.
46.
Miriam Davidson, Convictions of the Heart: Jim Corbett and the Sanctuary Movement (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1988), 60.
47.
For more on how the sanctuary movement understood the concept of “civil initiative,” see Hilary Cunningham, God and Caesar at the Rio Grande: Sanctuary and the Politics of Religion (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 40, 179, 218; Susan Bibler Coutin, Culture of Protest: Religious Activism and the U.S. Sanctuary Movement (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993), 108–16; Lane Van Ham, “Sanctuary Revisited: Central American Refugee Assistance in the History of Church-based Immigrant Advocacy,” Political Theology 10 (2009): 621–45 at 634, .
48.
In 1985, a class action suit was filed by sanctuary churches arguing that the US government was not adjudicating Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum cases based on merit but on the government’s political interests in Central America. A settlement was reached in 1991 that led to the government’s reconsideration of asylum applications that had been denied in the previous decade, when over 97% of Salvadoran and 99% of Guatemalan cases were rejected. See Carolyn Patty Blum, “The Settlement of American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh: Landmark Victory for Central American Asylum-Seekers,” International Journal of Refugee Law 3 (1991): 347–56, .
50.
For Vicente’s story, see Elna Otter and Dorothy Pine, eds., The Sanctuary Experience: Voices of the Community (San Diego, CA: Aventine, 2004), 256–59. For Fr. Paul Crowley’s story, see 259–77.
51.
Otter and Pine, The Sanctuary Experience, 260.
52.
53.
Jan Hallebeek, “Church Asylum in Late Antiquity: Concession by the Emperor or Competence of the Church?,” in Secundum Ius. Opstellen aangeboden aan prof. mr. P.L. Nève (Nijmegen, NL: Gerard Noodt Instituut, 2005), 163–82 at 164.
54.
Hamilton Hess, The Early Development of Canon Law and the Council of Serdica (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002), 95, 101.
55.
Council of Serdica, canon twenty-one from the Latin version. Hess, The Early Development of Canon Law, 225.
56.
Jennifer Barry, Bishops in Flight: Exile and Displacement in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2019), 2–5.
57.
Council of Serdica, canon eight from the Latin version, Hess, 217. For the Greek version, see canon seven, Hess, 231.
58.
Hess, 203.
59.
Since the Latin version of the canon says “flee to the mercy of the church” and the Greek version says “flee to the church,” it is possible to interpret the canon as referring to both the church as an institution and its intercessory role, as well as to the particular role that church buildings have in providing refuge. See Hallebeek, Church Asylum in Late Antiquity, 165.
60.
Barry, Bishops in Flight, 6–8.
61.
Council of Serdica, canon eight from the Latin version, Hess, 217.
62.
Hess, 202. See also Christopher W. B. Stephens, Canon Law and Episcopal Authority: The Canons of Antioch and Serdica (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015), 74.
63.
Hess, 203.
64.
Gregory of Nazianzus, “On St. Basil the Great,” Oration 43, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 22 (New York, NY: The Fathers of the Church, 1953), 56. All quotations of this recollection are in section 56.
65.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 43.
66.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 43.
67.
Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 243. Ambrose of Milan, in his treatise On Virgins 11.65, makes reference to a similar situation where a woman took refuge at the altar, though he does not further elaborate on the practice. See Boniface Ramsey, Ambrose (London: Routledge, 1997), 91.
68.
Paulinus of Milan, “The Life of St. Ambrose,” The Fathers of the Church, vol. 15 (New York, NY: The Fathers of the Church, 1953), 34. All quotations are in section 34. See also Neil B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 164.
69.
For details of Eutropius’s political downfall and the Emperor’s proclamation against him, see Chris Doyle, Honorius: The Fight for the Roman West, AD 395–423 (New York: Routledge, 2019), 106–7.
70.
John Chrysostom, “Homily one on Eutropius: On Eutropius, the Eunuch, Patrician and Consul,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 9 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1889), 1.
71.
John Chrysostom, “Homily two on Eutropius: After Eutropius having been found outside the Church had been taken captive,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 9 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1889), 1.
72.
Hallebeek, Church Asylum in Late Antiquity, 172.
73.
For a list of passages relating to sanctuary in Gratian’s Decretum, see Karl Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2011), 230.
74.
For a historical overview of the development of sanctuary in both civil and ecclesiastical law, with an emphasis on the Spanish empire and its colonies, see Miguel Luque Talaván, “La inmunidad del sagrado o el derecho de asilo eclesiástico a la luz de la legislación canónica y civil indiana,” Históricas Digital (2015): 253–84, .
75.
Session 25, Chapter 20. See John O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 232, 236, 253.
76.
Shannon McSheffrey, for example, argues that “the closing of religious houses in England as a key part of the English Reformation robbed the sanctuary system of its infrastructural underpinnings” and led to its “precipitous decline.” See Shannon McSheffrey, Seeking Sanctuary: Crime, Mercy, and Politics in English Courts, 1400–1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 192.
77.
Charles Augustine Bachofen, A Commentary on the New Code of Canon Law (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1918), 47. The original Latin reads: “Ecclesia iure asyli gaudet ita ut rei, qui ad illam confugerint, inde non sint extrahendi nisi necessitas urgeat, sine assensu Ordinarii, vel saltem rectoris ecclesiae.”
78.
Bachofen, 48.
79.
John J. Coughlin, Canon Law: A Comparative Study with Anglo-American Legal Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 37.
80.
For the official Latin record, see Pontificia commissio codici iuris canonici recognoscendo, “Coetus studii ‘De Locis et de Temporibus Sacris’ (Sessio I),” Communicationes 35.1 (2003): 60–82 at 72, . For a Spanish overview, see Juan Damián Gandía Barber, “El Proceso de redacción de los cánones acerca de las iglesias y oratorios: del código de 1917 al proyecto de 1977,” Anuario de Derecho Canónico 4 (2015): 71–147 at 121.
81.
Communicationes 35.1: 72; Barber, “El Proceso de redacción,” 122.
82.
Communicationes 35.1: 72; Barber, 121. The Latin reads: “Rev.mus Secretarius notat suppressionem vel retentionem huius canonis habere valorem pricipii coram societate civili, quare melius est si canon retineatur, etsi in praxi sit inefficax. Tamen si canon retinetur, ius asyli reformari debet ad instar immunitatis quam habent legationes, quae inmunitas peti debet ab illo qui interesse habet.”
83.
Communicationes 35.1: 72. The Latin reads: “Qui ad aliquam ecclesiam aliumve locum sacrum ad asylum obtinendum confugerint extrahendi non sunt sine assensu competentis auctoritatis ecclesiasticae.”
84.
Pontificia commissio codici iuris canonici recognoscendo, “Coetus Studii ‘De Locis et de Temporibus Sacris,’” Communicationes 35.2 (2003): 270–96 at 289, . For a Spanish version with analysis, see Juan Damián Gandía Barber, “El proceso de redacción de los cánones acerca de las iglesias, oratorios y capillas privadas: del proyecto de 1977 al código de derecho canónico,” Anuario de Derecho Canónico 5 (2016): 41–77 at 62. The Latin reads: “Perplures animadversiones contra hunc canonem factae sunt eo quod sustinet ius asyli, quod de facto minime agnoscitur a legibus civilibus. Ceterum Ecclesia non indiget hoc iure ut existat, ideo potest canon supprimi. Attentis istis suggestionibus, placet Consultoribus canonem delere.”
85.
The Assisi Network was led by Father Aldo Brunacci and Bishop Giuseppe Nicolini, who coordinated churches, monasteries, and convents to serve as places of refuge. See Nicola Caracciolo, Uncertain Refuge: Italy and the Jews during the Holocaust (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995). For the experience at Le Chambon-sur Lignon, see Peter Grose, A Good Place to Hide (NY: Pegasus, 2015).
86.
Bau, This Ground Is Holy, 161–71.
87.
FitzGerald, Refuge beyond Reach, 1–20.
88.
Pope Francis uses four key verbs and categories for outlining the church’s shared responsibility towards migrants and refugees: “to welcome, to protect, to promote, and to integrate.” See Francis, Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the 104th World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2018 (Rome, August 15, 2017), .
91.
This is made particularly clear in the Spanish phrase for sanctuary—acogerse a sagrado or asilo en sagrado (embrace of, asylum in, the sacred/holy).
93.
Without a valid judicial warrant signed by a state or federal judge, ICE may not enter private property such as a church without permission. Typically, ICE has immigration warrants signed by an immigration officer or immigration judge, which are not sufficient to search a home or private property without permission. Furthermore, ICE still considers places of worship as “sensitive locations” where “enforcement actions may occur . . . in limited circumstances, but will generally be avoided.” See U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “FAQs on Sensitive Locations and Courthouse Arrests,” https://www.ice.gov/ero/enforcement/sensitive-loc; National Immigration Law Center, “Warrants and Subpoenas 101,” September 2020, .
94.
Blase Cupich, February 28, 2017. Bishop Libasci of Manchester, NH also issued a letter to priests discouraging sanctuary in churches. The letter was sent after Fr. Joseph Gurdak, pastor of St. Anne-St. Augustin Parish in Manchester, declared that the parish community had decided that they would serve as a sanctuary for immigrants. For the letter, see http://nhchurches.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2017-04-07-Letter-from-Bishop-Libasci-re-Sanctuary.pdf. For more on Fr. Joseph Gurdak and the parish’s ministry with immigrants, see Livia Gershon, “When Loving Thy Neighbor Means Saving Them from Deportation,” Vice, September 21, 2017, https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywwykx/this-church-is-teaching-white-people-to-love-immigrants. Bishop Jaime Soto provides a more nuanced approach to the tradition of sanctuary, while still echoing the notion of false hope. See Jaime Soto, “Adopt the religious meaning of ‘sanctuary,’” Sacramento Bee, January 17, 2017, .
95.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl has also spoken of sanctuary as providing “false hope.” See Julie Zauzmer, “Cardinal Wuerl voices Catholic support for immigrants but urges caution about sanctuary churches,” Washington Post, March 2, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/03/02/cardinal-wuerl-voices-catholic-support-for-immigrants-but-urges-caution-about-sanctuary-churches. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is advised against providing sanctuary. See Rhina Guidos, “Claiming ‘sanctuary’ in the current immigration climate,” Catholic News Service, April 7, 2017, .
96.
97.
Alexander Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore propose the concept of “necessary flight” and its adoption within an international system of protection for displaced persons. They describe “necessary flight” as the idea that “some form of international response is merited for persons whose lives become so intolerable at home that flight is a reasonable and justifiable response.” See Aleinikoff and Zamore, 94–105.
98.
On the question of criminality, Willie James Jennings writes: “The great illusion of followers of Jesus, especially those who imagine themselves leaders, is that they could live a path different from Jesus and his disciples. . . . Real preaching and authentic teaching is inextricably bound to real criminality. Christians of the modern West have never really grasped our deep connection to the criminal mind, our mind.” Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2017), 45.
99.
100.
John Chrysostom, “Homily two on Eutropius: After Eutropius having been found outside the Church had been taken captive,” 1.
101.
Some of these Christian denominations, like the Roman Catholic Church, also operate major refugee resettlement agencies that work closely with the US government in a church–state partnership where the government provides most of their resettlement funds. Thus, providing sanctuary in churches, even if it is beyond a church–state partnership, ought not to be seen in contrast to, or in tension with, refugee resettlement. Both practices are a necessary means of standing in the gaps of protection. For a list of the nine major resettlement agencies, see Office of Refugee Resettlement, “Resettlement Agencies,” U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, July 17, 2012, .
102.
See Kathy Gilbert, “United Methodist Churches offer Sanctuary,” UM News, January 23, 2017, https://www.umnews.org/en/news/united-methodist-churches-offer-sanctuary; Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, “Sanctuary Denomination,” https://www.elca.org/sanctuarychurch; Presbyterian Office of the General Assembly, “Sanctuary,” http://oga.pcusa.org/section/mid-council-ministries/immigration/sanctuary/; The Episcopal Diocese of New York, “Bishop Dietsche Writes on Sanctuary,” April 10, 2017, .
104.
105.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, Under-Secretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, has expressed support of Mother Mechthild Thürmer’s efforts to prevent the deportation of asylum seekers. Madoc Cairns, “Cardinal voices support for Abbess facing trial for sheltering refugees,” The Tablet, July 30, 2020, .
107.
Francis, FT, 276. Translation in brackets is my own from the Spanish.
108.
I am grateful to Timothy Matovina, Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Rufus Burnett, Daniel Castillo, Thomas Davis, OCSO, and Duane Sisson for the generosity of their time in reading drafts and having conversations that enriched this article. I would also like to express gratitude to Christopher Steck, SJ and the three anonymous reviewers for their insights and suggestions.