Day 18: Celebrations of Life
For their latest entry in The New York Times’ series “The Way North,” Damien Cave and Todd Heisler travel to St. Thomas More Catholic Church, “a dynamic, always overflowing version of what can be found in many other congregations up and down 1-35.” Nearly 90 percent of the congregation’s almost 10,000 members are Hispanic, a sign of how many immigrants have come to the community in the last decade. On the day documented by the reporters, the church’s schedule is stacked with quinceañeras, a marriage, baptisms, and a children’s dance class. “This church is a reference point for everything,” says Rev. José María Briones, one of the Mexican priests at St. Thomas. “This is where they find a plumber, a lawyer, a girlfriend.”