S5E3: “Wounds” with Deacon Luis Zuñiga, Director of San Juan Diego Lay Ministry Institute in the Diocese of Brownsville, TX

The Jesuit Border Podcast

We are happy to welcome Deacon Luis Zuñiga, the Director of San Juan Diego Lay Ministry Institute in the Diocese of Brownsville, TX. Deacon Luis is a native to the Rio Grande Valley and has a twin brother who is a priest. We talk about the great women in his life who raised him and his brother in the faith. Deacon Luis also serves at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral downtown, so we discuss how the cathedral opened up its old gym as a respite center for migrants. He shares stories of the many wounds that he has seen on migrants who have come to their door: from cuts crossing razor wire by the river, to bruises and scars from physical abuse during kidnappings.

Brian and Joe reflect on their own encounters with the woundedness of migrants they have accompanied. Joe shares the story of a woman who came to the hygiene counter at the Humanitarian Respite Center and needed healing that no medicine alone could provide. Brian recounts the story of Michel, a pregnant woman in Reynosa, whose situation kept increasing in vulnerability as he tried to help get her the resources she needed. It is a story that Michel will likely tell to her newborn child for the rest of her life, and one that Brian won’t soon forget!