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Pope meets U.S. leaders patiently building ‘culture of solidarity’ | USCCB September 20th, 2023
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — When Pope Francis told a group of U.S. community organizers that their work was “atomic,” Jorge Montiel said, “I thought, ‘Oh, you mean we blow things up?'”
But instead, the pope spoke about how the groups associated with the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation in the United States take issues patiently, “atom by atom,” and end up building something that “penetrates” and changes entire communities, said Montiel, an IAF organizer in Colorado and New Mexico.
Pope Francis’ hourlong meeting Sept. 14 with 15 delegates from the group was a follow-up to a similar meeting a year ago. Neither meeting was listed on the pope’s official schedule and, the delegates said, both were conversations, not “audiences.”
“It was relaxed, it was engaging,” said Joe Rubio, national co-director of IAF. “Often you don’t see that even with parish priests,” he told Catholic News Service Sept. 15, garnering the laughter of other delegates.
ICCR and IAF Community Organizers Join Forces Against Foreclosures September 16th, 2011
Interfaith Center on Corporate responsibility (ICCR) members, including the Missionary Oblates, have been working with Metro Industrial Areas Foundation affiliates to get Bank of America & Wells Fargo to take action on foreclosure issues in Prince William County, VA and Milwaukee, WI. This collaboration has produced results:
- In Milwaukee, CommonGround, Metro IAF’s affiliate has organized successfully, forcing banks including Wells Fargo and Bank of America to commit $15.2 million to finance blight removal, a 100+ new Nehemiah homes development, and jobs in the Sherman Park neighborhood hard hit by foreclosure.
- In Prince William County, VA, Metro IAF’s affiliate, VOICE, organized and directly confronted Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan at the 2011 annual shareholders meeting. This resulted in Bank of America senior leadership requiring reform of loan modification practices that has resulted in 250 backlogged modifications being resolved. Bank executives also committed to negotiate on VOICE’s demands that Bank of America fund housing counselors and reinvest hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Prince William County neighborhoods devastated by foreclosures.
VOICE is organizing a 1,000 person public action on Sunday, October 30th with Senator Mark Warner (Senate Banking Committee) and bank officials.
Watch this moving video of an anti-foreclosure rally organized by VOICE in Northern Virginia last April:
