As Immigration Enforcement Escalates, How One South Bay Priest Is Pushing Back

Inside Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish — home to historic farmworker organizing in East San Jose — we sit down with Father Jon Pedigo, a Catholic priest in the South Bay, to talk about the role of faith and houses of worship under the Trump Administration, what he’s seen in his primarily Spanish-speaking communities, and why he’s leaving the pulpit to become a full-time organizer. 

Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:00] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to the Bay, local news to keep you rooted.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:00:07] I was at St. Lucy’s and it was after Mass. And this lady, you know, comes up and says, I need a blessing, I need a blessing.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:17] This is Father John Pedigo. He’s a Catholic priest who’s worked as a pastor in the South Bay for decades, primarily in Spanish-speaking communities in Campbell, Morgan Hill, and San Jose. Communities that have now been hit hard by President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:00:39] Her son has been taken from her.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:42] Taken by immigration.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:00:43] Taken by immigration, deta detained. They’ve she’s given no information about it. She’s desperate. And so she’s wailing. But what do you say to her? You as a priest. Right. As a priest you say, I need to just h I need to hold the space with you. I need to cry with you. I need to just hold the space. And I ask people to come up and just kind of hold her in prayer. So they’re kind of h putting her hands on her shoulder and praying with her. I mean that’s all really you can kind of do.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:10] Father John knows that faith leaders and houses of worship have an important role to play in moments like this. Moments of political and social chaos, where people are afraid, want to be consoled, and are seeking a sense of safety and community. He’s also someone who wrestles with the limits of his work at the church pulpit.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:01:39] For me, I found it I needed more than the sacramental and the pastoral dimension of holding a person who is inconsolable. There has to also be about getting people to think about how are we building power in our neighborhood.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:59] When President Trump began his second term, Father John committed himself to do more, taking his faith and the stories from people in his ministry with him to step up his community organizing. So today we sit with Father John Pedigo and talk with him about the role of faith leaders when immigrants are under attack.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:02:33] My name’s Father John Pedigo. I’m the executive director of People Acting in Community Together, Pact. We’re at our Lady of Guadalupe Parish. It’s in the east side, the heart of East Side San Jose, in the former neighborhood called Sal Si Puedes, meaning “get out if you can” neighborhood. We call it now the Mayfair neighborhood.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:51] What was it called?

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:02:52] What is well Sal Si Puedes means that it was one of the last places in Santa Clara County to have pavement and sewage. It was former farm workers that are here and they didn’t really have the resources like other parts of San Jose. And so when it would rain, it would be this mud that you couldn’t get out. So they always say, Leave if you can, sal si puedes – get out if you can. When Dolores Huerta came here with Cesar Chavez – his organizing roots are here in San Jose East Side – that phrase Sal Si Puede they turn it around to say si se puede.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:46] I wanna step back and really like sort of help people to understand the particular community that we’re that we’re in, who you serve and and just like a little bit more about who you are. We’re in Mayfair.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:04:00] We’re in the Mayfair community, right.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:01] Mayfair community in East San Jose, predominantly immigrant community.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:04:05] Primarily Spanish speaking monolingual community in East Side is a heart of the East Side and it has always been a place where Spanish speaking folks will come. So when I was a pastor here a few years ago, it was predominantly Mexican immigrants with a few Chicanos that were old farm worker families. So we have an English mass, but then we were getting at the Spanish Mass is a lot of new folks from Mexico. Then we started when I was here, we started to see more Central Americans. Now we’re seeing a lot more people from Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Salvador. So immigration reform has always been a huge issue here. Education of children has been a an another large issue in health. You know, public safety and health are our big issues of the people that are here.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:55] How long have you been sort of rooted in this community?

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:05:00] Late nineties maybe?

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:01] Okay, a long time.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:05:02] This has been a long time. It’s been a long time.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:05] I I don’t imagine most priests come into this work because of an interest in immigration, but how did how did that sort of happen for you? Was that always the case that immigration has been part of your work as a priest or

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:05:23] No, strangely no. When I first started, it was not an issue. So I was ordained in ninety-one. I was in Morgan Hill. We were just I was just working with the Spanish speaking community and it was English and English community and Spanish speaking community. And it was mostly just people wanting to just get along and be be part of the community. People were looking to integrate and not forget their roots. And over t just just a few short years, everything became really racialized. And it was like very anti-immigrant or anti-Mexican. And that just became more and more anti-immigrant as the years went on. So I was in it because I was working with the working partnerships, USA. I was one of the clergy members of their board and we did a lot of work with hotel workers, most were immigrants.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:12] But why? Was it just ’cause it was your community?

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:06:16] Well, my mother asked the same question.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:19] Like why do immigration work on top of being a priest or

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:06:24] It’s you can’t really do at least when you’re working, at least as I was working, I didn’t really see a division between that, is because whatever the needs of the people are, that’s my needs. So whatever their worries are, those are my worries. Whatever their joys are, those are my joys. As a priest, we believe in the spiritual dimension of sacramental life, meaning that that it’s the divine is you disclose in ordinary, everyday things that we do. The the divine emerges from the hearts of the people. My first week at St. Catharine’s was I learned to do one-to-one. So first thing I did is like knock on doors and just get to know people. I I had a dinner and a dessert meeting with two different families. One was in Coyote Valley. There’s some farm labor camps that are in that area. And one of these small camps was a very wonderful, beautiful family that had tons of kids, they’re all super smart kids, wonderful kids, but they lived in this kind of farm worker house, which was like cardboard and plywood, and they had the most delicious food. They’re all laughing, they’re all talking, all the kids are present. It was really wonderful. Then I says, Okay, I gotta I gotta go to another one-to-one, which is up in the Holiday Lakes Estates. Which was in Morgan Hill. It’s a very nicey nice houses and go to this house. You had to walk over a bridge because they had a stream in front of their house. You go in, you take your shoes off, and you kind of meet the people. They had nice soft jazz playing. And then they their teenage and college age kids are sitting there very poised in nice shirts and you know, clothes, and they’re all sitting there around in a circle in the in the living room. So you gotta talk to the parents and they said, Oh, I want you to talk to young people. And it was it was very different experience because they had -.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:16] Night and day.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:08:18] Night and day. And I realized that that was for me showing that a lot of the Spanish speaking people and the English speaking people, though they were at the same table at the church, they really were in different dimensions of realities. My mom grew up as a farm worker in Hawaii. So I’m half Asian. And so I ex experienced some other racial issues that my mom would speak about when she would work for the government. She worked for the government for a while, and and I don’t think she was thinking that she was kind of raising me to be radical. These are just regular t you know, talk story. You know, in Hawaii, you just hang around talk story. And and just kind of the vibe and the feeling of what happens when you’re having conversations with people, getting to know them and and talk to them and hearing what their stories are. And I brought that into ministry with me.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:15] Was there a moment within this last year that you realized that this was gonna be a particularly chaotic, scary, frightening year for the community that you serve here in San Jose?

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:09:35] I would after the election, lead and facilitate healing circles here in the neighborhood, here in the in the Mayfair.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:43] What was that like?

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:46] It was humbling because people really, really, really fearful about what’s happening. So people in different organizations and different collectives, one of the schools, they asked if I would come in and just sort of work with the kids or work with the the staff or work with the population. So they can process some of their issues and what’s going on. What are you feeling? I had one small healing circle at Saint Lucy’s. It was requested by the teenagers because they’re they were concerned about their moms. And so what we did is we kind of sat everyone in a circle and then we just had people share briefly what’s going on. And then we broke into small groups and just said, All right, let’s pretend that we’re family. How are we having this conversation? Someone’s having to go, you know, back to wherever they’re coming from. How are you breaking the news?

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:36] Oh.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:10:37] To each other and what are you all feeling? And so they break broke into small groups. Like there was someone that was assigned the role of a mother, and then three were assigned the roles of of a of of kids. It’s intense. It was very yeah, it was intense. It was real sad.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:51] But I’m getting the sense that in some ways you found your role as a priest a bit limiting, maybe in this for this moment that we’re in.

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:11:02] Very limiting. I think there’s there’s very limiting. I think that some would say, No, that’s what you do as a priest. It’s all you and that is what is fully expected of you. For me, I found it I needed more than the sacramental and the pastoral dimension of holding a person who is inconsolable. And I said, God, I am right now working full-time in a parish. And I said, I there has to be something more to helping people make real decisions, to to to move them from, you know, isolation, desperation, and fear into realizing their own potential, their inner potential.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:46] Did you did you not feel like you could do that at the pulpit, on church? I could

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:11:52] I keep it I was I was getting push back from the English speaking community on it, and even the Spanish because it’s really difficult because people also want us to be comforted. I look at sacred text and I ask where is the liberation message here? What’s the where are people being freed? You know, listening and bringing people into community and that’s really important. But you need to also have a focus and an effort to take people to that next level.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:27] In March of this year, Father Jon got permission to leave his job as a parochial vicar at St. Lucie Parish in Campbell to work instead as a full-time executive director at the multi-faith community organization called PACT, or People Acting in Community Together.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:53] How different is what you’re what you’re doing now with PACT with these other community organizations and religious organizations? How is it different than the work that you were doing as a priest in terms of helping the immigrant community here in San Jose?

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:13:09] So my work now is really focused on building power. That means that this craziness is gonna come to an end. And at the end of when it happens, are we gonna be in a position where we don’t repeat the same cycle to get us in this mess again? So the first thing is you gotta get people to kind of get to that place, to see themselves different. So that we do that in in our leadership development, and then we get them to start working with other people, to start organizing with other people.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:41] Any specific issues that you’re you’re pushing?

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:13:44] One of the big things is is universal legal representation. People without a lawyer are ten and a half times more likely to, you know, get out. And so all this illegality that’s going on, people not being presented with a warrant, there’s no way there to kind of bring this to the front. And so we’re working with members of the board of supervisors, working with members of the state senate, we’re looking with assembly members to you know look at this issue and how do we how do we structure it so it’s sustainable? The other piece is activating faith communities to be accompaniment teams. Accompaniment teams can do a bunch of different things, and we train different teams to handle different kinds of problems. And so there’s one team that works with a simple walking with people and helping them get connected to social services that they qualify for. Other forms of accompaniment can be going with somebody to court to an immigration check-in because you need to have people there showing that you have community support. It’s they’re less less likely to be taken away when you have a lot of people there. And so we’re now in the process of working with faith communities who have chosen to do one or more dimensions of accompaniment, and we’re opening that up even more. But it’s just basic organizing. And when you do that, with the belief that God wants you to do it, you’re you’re and there’s no stopping you because you’re already you’re already in a value based system where you believe the divine spark is the energy that’s moving you forward. Ain’t no one gonna stop you.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:13] It is a lot more work than I’d ever expect a priest to do. But at the end of the day you’re still a priest. And i it seems like there is still a very important role that churches, houses of worship, faith leaders can play in this moment. How w what do you think is the role of a faith leader in times like these?

Fr. Jon Pedigo [00:15:39] As a minister, as a priest, as a rabbi, we all understand there is a power in community, that people need to connect to each other, and that we need to support the weaker link. We need to challenge the missing link. We need to invite and heal. I think that if faith communities are going to be relevant in the future, they need to be sure they’re damn well sure they’re they’re convening people, they’re facilitating conversations. They are not trying to create litmus tests on who belongs to my network, who doesn’t belong to my network. People aren’t asking that question. They’re saying, who is going to be ready to be with me and stand up with me and help me? Churches need to do that as well. Synagogues need to do that, and all the different temples need to do that. Songhas need to do that. We all need to figure out how do we get on board together. Believing that there is a divine spark in every human being, believing in the power of the divine to shape, change, and transform the person and society, knowing that with the divine, with God, all things are possible.