Sophie Cruz’s Meeting with the Pope not Spontaneous
Earlier this week, Sophie Cruz, the child of undocumented immigrants, met the Pope, in what looked to be a spontaneous meeting. It was apparently not spontaneous, however. AP reports that Sophie Cruz’s encounter with the pope during a parade in Washington was carefully planned. For nearly a year, an immigrant advocacy group had been preparing the young girl from Los Angeles to make a dash for the popemobile to deliver a message about the plight of undocumented parents.
“We planned to do this from the moment we learned he was coming to the States,” Juan Jose Gutierrez of the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition told The Associated Press. “We have been working for a while now trying to sensitize the American public that dealing with immigration is not just dealing with the people who came in without proper documents but that we also have … countless children whose parents are undocumented.” Gutierrez said the group decided to use the children of immigrants to represent their push for immigration reforms to the pope, a staunch supporter of immigrants. “We have been looking for children to make the case that we as adults have been making for years,” he said.
Sophie was selected for the Washington trip because she “impressed us all so much that we felt she would be our best spokesman,” Gutierrez said.
KJ