Beginning in July 2021, the Jesuits USA Central and Southern Province missioned a small team of Jesuits to serve in the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border. We met with Bishop Daniel Flores who articulated our mission to “read the reality and respond to it.” Since then, we have strived to follow that missionary call.
What we have encountered is a particularly acute need for pastoral accompaniment and sacramental ministry with the migrant population on both sides of the border. In response to this reality, we visit migrant camps, shelters, and detention centers to celebrate Mass and accompany migrants in their need.
We formalized our ministry in October 2023 as Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries. This is a trade name of the Jesuits USA Central and Southern Province operating in the state of Texas.
The mission of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries is to offer privileged and preferential religious care to the poor, with a focus on pastoral accompaniment and sacramental ministry with the migrant population on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Our ministry is itinerant and missionary in nature and strives to walk with the excluded, as articulated in the Universal Apostolic Preferences of the Society of Jesus.
Our ministry is flexible and constantly discerns the most appropriate ways to meet the needs of the migrant population, maintaining the readiness to move and walk with the migrant church.
Our ministry also includes humanitarian aid, collaborating with local actors and other religious working with migrants, raising awareness on the border reality, and advocating for immigration reform.
We take our name from Our Lady of the Way (“Nuestra Señora del Camino” in Spanish). Many of the migrants we accompany turn to the Virgin Mary in prayer, and the devotion to Our Lady of the Way was especially important to the founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius of Loyola. We continue to pray for her intercession for all those “on the way” in their migrant journey.
Father Brian Strassburger, SJ Father Brian Strassburger, SJ, is the director of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries, and one of the original Jesuits missioned to the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021. Father Strassburger grew up in Denver, where he attended Regis Jesuit High School followed by college at Saint Louis University. After graduation, he joined the Augustinian Volunteers (AVs) and spent a year in the Bronx and another in South Africa. He entered the Society of Jesus in 2011.
After finishing the novitiate, Father Strassburger earned a master’s degree in international political economy and development at Fordham University. Then he was sent as a regent to Managua, Nicaragua to work at a Jesuit-founded development nonprofit for a couple of years. When he returned to the U.S., he completed his theology studies at Boston College by approaching theology from the lens of immigration. He was ordained a priest in 2021.
Father Flavio Bravo, SJ Father Flavio Bravo, SJ, is himself an immigrant. As a teenager, he migrated alone from Nicaragua to the United States. He has been ministering to migrants at the border since 2022. Prior to that he served in Puerto Rico, as pastor at Parroquia San Ignacio de Loyola, as president of Colegio San Ignacio, the Jesuit high school; and as the superior of the Jesuit community of Puerto Rico.
Father Bravo entered the Antilles Province of the Society of Jesus in 1992. Two years later, he transcribed from the Antilles Province to the former New Orleans Province. He earned degrees from Saint Louis University and the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Father Bravo was ordained in 2005 and made final vows in 2014. He served at Strake Jesuit College Preparatory School in Houston for 16 years.
The Society of Jesus was founded in 1540 by St. Ignatius of Loyola and his first companions. Responding to the needs of the church at the time, the early Jesuits decided to make a special fourth vow of obedience to the Pope regarding missions. This unique vow goes beyond the three standard vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and reflects the Jesuit’s missionary commitment to go where the needs are greatest.
From the beginning, Jesuits were sent around the world, with early missions to the Congo, Brazil, and India. St. Francis Xavier, one of the founders and a dear friend of St. Ignatius, became one of the greatest missionaries in the history of the Church as he traveled to India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan. He died just off the coast of China in 1552.
This missionary spirit was quickly accompanied by a commitment to education. In 1548, the Jesuits were asked to run a school in Messina, Italy. By the time Ignatius died in 1556, 35 Jesuit colleges had been founded. In the world today, the Jesuits continue to be known for their educational institutions, including 27 colleges and universities and roughly 60 high schools in the U.S. alone.
While educational institutions have become a hallmark of Jesuit ministry, the missionary spirit of the Society remains fundamental. Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries reflects that call to go to the margins and seek out where the needs are greatest. This was at the heart of St. Ignatius’s desire when first founding the Society of Jesus and asking for the fourth vow, and it has been embodied by so many Jesuit missionaries like St. Francis Xavier across the centuries. Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries continues to live out that legacy today.
Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries is a trade name of the Jesuits USA Central and Southern Province operating in the state of Texas.
