World Youth Day USA Guides International Pilgrimage Leaders Guide | Page 32

goal written into the foundational documents

Catholic community in this country: Sr. Rose

(“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that

Phillippine Duchesne, R.S.C.J., who came to

all men are created equal…” from the

America from France to minister to the Native

Declaration of Independence) and national

Americans in the frontier areas of Missouri and

motto (“E pluribus unum,” that is “out of

Kansas; Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, S.C.,

many, one”). In a sense, this desire for national

who started the first Catholic school in the

unity, despite the obstacles, has fueled

country in Maryland and founded the first

suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony and

American religious community, the Sisters of

abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, leading

Charity; Fr. Damien de Veuster, SS.CC. and Sr.

to the great crusades for civil and workers’

Marianne Cope, O.S.F., who ministered among

rights championed by Rosa Parks, the Selma

the lepers of Molokai colony in the Hawaiian

marchers and freedom riders of the 1960s,

islands; Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini, M.S.C.,

the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and

who came to the United States to care for the

Cesar Chavez, among others.

poor Italian immigrants and orphans, and
established many homes and hospitals across

Even beyond these two, a third and perhaps

the country; Mother Katharine Drexel, S.B.S.,

“most Catholic” American ideal is a quest to

who ministered to Native Americans and

make the United States a land of mercy,

African Americans in her native Philadelphia;

compassion, and refuge for the oppressed.

Msgr. Edward Flanagan, founder of the Boys

Engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of

Town orphanage in Nebraska; Dorothy Day,

Liberty is a gentle invitation (written by

Obl.O.S.B., a journalist, social activist, and

American poet Emma Lazarus) to all who pass

founder of the Catholic Worker Movement

by: “Give me your tired, your poor, your

who Pope Francis praised in his 2015 visit to

huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The

the United States, saying “her