WASHINGTON (OSV News) — When Washington Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala returned home to rural El Salvador earlier this year, his 90-year-old mother, Catalina Ayala de Menjivar, put him right to work, to join her in weeding and tending to the crops on their family’s plot of farmland and to help with various chores there.
“When I go back home in El Salvador, my mom is like (telling me), I have to put this ring away, and get the shovel and the machete and help her. She’s 90 years old, she still works,” the 54-year-old bishop said in an interview with the Catholic Standard, Washington’s archdiocesan newspaper. “I went back home, and I helped to build a shed for the chickens.”
From immigrant to bishop: A journey of work and faith
Work has been part of the fabric of Bishop Menjivar’s life, from his childhood when he worked on his family’s farm, to the many different jobs he did as a young man after fleeing his war-torn country and immigrating to the United States, to his eventual ordination as a priest for the Archdiocese of Washington in 2004, to his ordination as an auxiliary bishop for Washington in 2023.
Bishop Menjivar, who is believed to be the first bishop for the United States who was born in El Salvador, summarized his work history in May as he addressed graduates at Georgetown University and received an honorary doctorate.
Overcoming adversity: The immigrant experience
“In 1990, I arrived in Los Angeles, California, with only a change of clothes in a backpack, but full of dreams,” Bishop Menjivar told the graduates. “As most immigrants do, I did any kind of job I could get: receptionist, construction, janitorial work, painting, youth ministry. Meanwhile, I took English classes at night, and I also studied for the high school equivalency degree.”
Noting how he had served as a parish priest in Washington for two decades when he learned that Pope Francis had appointed him to serve as an auxiliary bishop there, he added, “Not bad for someone who began cleaning restrooms and painting houses with no English, right? We all must start somewhere and seize every opportunity that life offers us.”
The future bishop arrived in the United States as an immigrant at age 18 without legal documents, and after applying for asylum and gaining a work permit and later a green card, he became a U.S. citizen in 2006. His first job was a receptionist at a law firm in Los Angeles. For the first time, he received a paycheck for his work, and like many immigrants, he began sending money back home to El Salvador to help his family there.
Next, he worked in maintenance at clinics in that area, doing whatever needed to be done, including painting and sometimes putting in floors.
“Work is always a blessing,” he said, adding, “I really liked my work as a painter, because I could see the results of my work. … Just fixing a house or a place brings a lot of satisfaction.”
Building community through work
After moving to the Washington area, Evelio Menjivar worked as a janitor at a UPS warehouse in Laurel, Maryland, arriving before dawn to clean offices. After trucks left for deliveries, he’d cleaning those work areas. He also had a part-time job in Gaithersburg, Maryland, cleaning offices. Later, he worked as a painter for two years.
He enjoyed the camaraderie that he shared with his fellow workers.
“Working with others is a really beautiful experience. I feel like I truly built up good relationships, friendships with others,” said Bishop Menjivar. “Building up community (at work), you start caring for one another. You are sad when something happens to those people. So the workplace becomes a family, you support each other.”
Like many immigrant workers, he was sometimes exploited. He described a time when he was working for a painting company whose owner didn’t pay the workers.
Bishop Menjivar also noted how immigrant workers sometimes do not have workplace safety that other workers have.
Honoring workers and advocating for labor rights
Two months after being ordained as a bishop, he celebrated the annual memorial Mass at St. Camillus Church in Silver Spring for construction workers — nearly all immigrant and non-union workers — who died in workplace accidents that past year in Washington and surrounding areas. Bishop Menjivar, who wore a hard hat at the Mass along with his priestly vestments, blessed rows of chairs with a censer — there were 40 chairs and each contained a white hard hat bearing the name of a fallen worker, next to a red rose.
The bishop said that presiding at the Mass “was a very moving experience. It could have been me. It could have been my brother. My brother-in-law fell from the roof. From there, he could not do much work. So it could have been anybody, it could have been me, because I took risks, to paint and without the right equipment.”
Episcopal motto and commitment to solidarity
For his episcopal motto, Bishop Menjivar chose the phrase, “Ibat cum illis,” (“He walked with them”) from Luke 24:15, the account of Jesus walking with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. That phrase resonates with him, after his experiences as an immigrant and a worker.
“We need to walk with people, we need to meet people where they are,” the bishop said, adding, “He (Jesus) walked with them, that means everybody, with all people.”
As a parish priest and now as a bishop, he understands the challenges that immigrants and other workers face, such as making sacrifices to support themselves, their families here and their families in their home countries. As a priest, he knew that it was important to be available to those workers in the evenings and weekends, because they cannot leave work during the day.
He received training to be a labor priest and learned about the Catholic Church’s traditional support for labor unions, and how labor unions helped earlier generations of immigrants and workers today to gain better pay, benefits and job security, enabling them to attain the American dream.
“The first thing the labor movement does, it creates solidarity,” Bishop Menjivar said. “You come to understand that you are not alone, and that somebody else is going to speak up for you, that’s the union. Somebody is going to be with you … (and) defend your rights. If you do it yourself, it’s going to be very easy for the company or the boss to get rid of you, but if you do it in solidarity, in union with others, that is going to be more difficult, so you have the protection of that solidarity. … That’s the beauty that I see in labor unions, that you look after the well-being of others.”
Labor Day and the dignity of work
Labor Day is “a great celebration, because it is a celebration about workers,” he said. “It is about the people that sacrifice the comfort in their lives and risk to build up a better world, to provide for their families.”
“Work lifts our spirits up, because we know that we are contributing to society, making society better, making our life better,” he added. “We are co-creators with God.”
The bishop said that the special nature of work can be seen in part of the Eucharistic prayer that priests recite at Mass during the consecration: “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.”
He noted, “It is not just bread that has come down from heaven, but it is the fruit of our labor, that becomes the Eucharist.”
Mark Zimmermann is editor of the Catholic Standard, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington.
