	Cover Story
	Cal and Irma are children of immigrants:now they work to include the excluded En Español
Calistro (Cal) and Irma Torres are beautiful people. More than perfectly rendered features, their beauty is like that of a summer sunset or a waterfall that beckons you down a cool, forested path. It is obvious on their faces and invites one to sit down and get acquainted. When Cal talks about his ministry with migrant workers, he calls it his “passion” and Irma agrees. They speak of this with a calmness, but to Cal, the son of migrants, it is obvious it was, and still is, a driving force in his life. When he and Irma married in 1951, they were involved with migrant ministry together, right from the start. They were made for each other. At times, however, Irma’s love and her devotion to God were tested. “It is hard sometimes, you know, as a mother, to put God before even your children,” she says, explaining the sacrifices involved in ministering to the migrant workers. Family meals were lost to their children while they tended to their duties in the evenings at the camps, and Cal spent weekends away from their home as he studied to be a deacon. Still, they followed their hearts and would not have been happy doing anything else. Their children understood this, and Irma finally came to realize this after many years of worrying. In their living room, Cal and Irma have high school pictures hanging of their five children. As Irma shares the age of her oldest son with a slight surprise in her voice, she looks to Cal, who smiles his confirmation. Their children are now all well-educated, successful people. Cal and Irma must have imbued them with a self-confidence that comes from a loving, close-knit family. Their love is apparent, and it speaks of life as it should be good people going into the world with the strength of a loving family behind them. The addition to their house, which is used for family gatherings, opens up outside their kitchen, which includes a large, long table. From the beginning of their ministry, Cal and Irma have included the excluded at their table. Describing his ministry, Cal opens his arms and says, “We tried to make sure these people know they are welcome here. Wewelcomed them.” The migrant workers – especially in the early days when Cal worked with Fr. Peter Dougherty, who first took Cal along to minister to them – were once considerably more reclusive than they are today. At one time, their area alone had seventeen camps, each camp with about two hundred people plus children. As the produce farmed in the area has changed over the years, the number of workers has changed and is now a smaller number than it used to be. Cal recalls one incident that, forty years later, still raises ire in his voice. He had started collecting clothes and gave them to the ‘ leader’ to distribute among the people. A leader is a man who makes the contracts with the farmers for the people’s work. He usually owns the transport, a truck, as well. The next time Cal and Fr. Dougherty came to visit the workers, they found out that the leader of these people had sold them the clothes Cal had collected. He vowed to himself it would never happen again. Cal shakes his head ruefully as he speaks of that day long ago, thinking of how that man took advantage of the workers he had tried to help. During the 1960s and 1970s, Fr. Bill Carolin, whom Cal considers his mentor, received the first funding for the migrant program. It was also in the late ‘60s when the program started that would eventually allow Cal to be ordained a deacon. After his ordination, Cal and the other deacons were able to give the sacraments to the migrants, fulfilling a dream of service to God. Irma heard a different calling. She became the coordinator for the Migrant Program for the diocese at the time. She put a lot of thought into the way she handled things. For instance, she knew it wouldn’t do to bring a box of clothes for a large group of people and tell them to take what they wanted. This would result in chaos, and no one would get what they needed. Instead, Irma put together laundry baskets with basic supplies, like soap and food staples, and delivered them personally to each family. This way, she could assess their needs, find clothes that would fit them and treat people with greater dignity. “Regardless of what you do, each person has dignity,” she says, as Cal nods in agreement. Both Cal and Irma stress that being welcoming is the important thing. Greeting the workers, they would express themselves as “Catholic representatives of the diocese.” Their hospitality has always been motivated by belonging to the same Church. Through building community, they made the Church a continuous presence in the lives of those they served. For instance, every spring, they would often have what Irma calls “ice-breakers,” which involved playing softball and having sandwiches and Kool-Aid, or playing bingo or another activity that would bring people together. Each year, the work starts in June, with strawberries, as migrant families come from Mexico or even Central America. And the work continues, from peppers to pickles, until the apple harvest. The religious education programs for the children have to be scheduled around this. Cal and Irma explain how the migrants often did not like going out from the camps to go to Church. They always liked to stay by themselves, which was a big factor in how they were ministered to. Now that there is a bilingual Mass, more of the migrants are coming, Cal says. At the end of the year, there is a big fiesta, and the sacraments are celebrated – first Communions, baptisms and even marriages. Irma has several poster-boards filled with pictures from the fiestas: little girls with bright white dresses and even brighter smiles; boys with their hair combed down flat on their heads, with big toothy grins and shiny blue neckties. It is a beautiful, grand celebration. One might assume the first Communion clothes are donated, knowing how expensive they can be. Yet, Irma explains,“They would buy their own first Communion outfits. It’s special. It’s a special day for them, and this is something they feel they have to do.” All the food for the fiesta used to be made by church volunteers. Now, they make an effort to have some dishes made by the people for whom the fiesta is celebrated. “They also want to contribute to their own fiesta,” Irma says. “It is better this way.” She waves her hand in a little gesture, as if this is self-explanatory – and it is. It’s about sharing a table. We each need to bring our own gifts. In many ways, Cal and Irma have come full-circle in their lives. Although of retirement age, Cal still is active in his ministry. Irma shares a story about their youngest son, who grew up to have a successful career, and when he landed an overseas job, he had his parents come over to see Europe. “That was something,” Irma says, “because all the doctors told me that it was either him or me when he was born. I had a problem with Rh-negative blood.” She continues, “We were supposed to die – but we didn’t. God saved us.” “Anyway, ... our son took us to France. We saw all sorts of places,” Irma says, gently pleating a napkin by her tea cup. “But we went to this one church where they had all the Old Testament stories in stained glass.” She raises her hands, in remembering all the light streaming through the windows. “Because, you know, people back then couldn’t read, and it was so beautiful with all the light coming in.” She pauses and looks at Cal. “And it came to me how we were there with our son, you know? And with all that light shining, it came to me, how according to the doctors we shouldn’t even be here.” One night long ago when doctors were wrong, God was right. People often see the world from a limited perspective, but Cal and Irma Torres have a talent of seeing beauty through the eyes of God. The story of Michelangelo sculpting the statue of David comes to mind. When he went to the marble quarry to look for a suitable stone, he noticed there was a superb piece of marble that had been set to the side, because it had a large flaw running through it. After thoroughly looking around, he decided he must have it, despite the flaw. Michelangelo, as a great artist, had a fine passion for his art and used that flaw to make his statue of David a masterpiece. And when asked how he sculpted such beauty, he said he only removed enough marble to reveal the statue that was already there. He saw through it to the beauty inside.
Perhaps when we see migrant workers, we see poor people in block houses who need our charity. When Cal and Irma see them, they see brothers and sisters in Christ who are beautiful. “The migrants’ sense of sharing is more profound,” they say. When they see migrant workers, they see ways to use their imaginations, to fire their passions, to bring them together – to unite them as community, unite them as Church. In a way, it’s an art.