“For us, it’s like a miracle,” Msgr. Terrence Watanabe said about Maria Lanakila Catholic Church in the town of Lahaina being seemingly untouched by the fierce Maui wildfires.

Sister Norma Pimentel has devoted years to protecting life at the border as migrant flows rise and fall. Growing anxiety over the lifting of Title 42 controls at the border has been a recent distraction from her ministry.

Long before the earthquakes in February, the viability of the Christian community in Samandag had been under cultural and economic threat. Many from the city’s minority Christian community had already departed, seeking economic or educational opportunities elsewhere.

“If the women of South Sudan are given an opportunity to develop, to have space to be productive, South Sudan will be transformed.”

“These are strong, courageous people of hope,” Daniel Corrou, S.J., the director of Jesuit Refugee Service/Middle East and North Africa, said. But even hope has its limits.

Pope Francis repeated his pressing call for an end to the violence that has forced millions into camps for refugees or the internally displaced in South Sudan.