Search
-
March 3, 2026By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
Observing court hearings of migrants, praying for them at the U.S.-Mexico border and at a desert death site, and learning from their supporters’ treatment of adversaries were ways a local deacon and his wife spent a sabbatical – to prepare for future ministry.
Deacon Paul F. X. Covino said he and his wife, Anne, left their Worcester home last year on Aug. 10, and returned Dec. 16. They worked in Chaparral, New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, with religious formerly stationed in the Worcester diocese, among other people.
Photos courtesy of Deacon Paul and Anne Covino
Mass is celebrated in the desert near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, near where the human remains of migrants who died in the desert were found. A group of people search for remains in this desert area and, each month, a Franciscan priest offers a Mass at a different site where the remains have been found.
The motivation was to get away, try something different, and transition into retirement, explained Deacon Covino, director of campus ministry at Assumption University in Worcester, from 2014-2025. He retired from that full-time position July 31, and returned to campus Jan. 1 as a part-time deacon, to do liturgical and sacramental work. (He’d integrated diaconate ministry into his university job after ordination in 2017.) The couple now ministers at Assumption’s chapel, and is registered at St. Patrick Parish in Whitinsville, where they also volunteer.
Mrs. Covino retired from being a nurse midwife at St. Vincent Hospital in 2022.
They wanted to do something meaningful that “might help inform” what they do in retirement, her husband said, and got ideas – and experience – through their sabbatical.
Deacon Paul F. X. Covino and his wife, Anne, get together with Assumptionists – Father Ron Sibugan and Brother Daniele Caglioni – both of whom formerly worked with him in campus ministry at Assumption University in Worcester, and now serve at the border. The deacon preached at Mass at Guardian Angels Parish in El Paso, which Assumptionists staff, on Nov. 9, 2025.
They stayed at a volunteer house of the Religious of the Assumption, and worked with them and members of their brother congregation, the Augustinians of the Assumption, sponsors of Assumption University.
The Covinos knew these religious women and men and had seen their work with migrants near the border when visiting in 2019, in preparation for Deacon Covino to take Assumption University students there. For those annual service trips, students helped some of the many people who had been permitted to enter the U.S. to await hearings, and were preparing to join family members or friends throughout the country.
Until they could get to their destinations, migrants were housed at several shelters in the El Paso area, including ones the Assumptionists and Religious of the Assumption ran. An Assumptionist reported receiving more than 300 migrants per month, said a July 2023 story in The Catholic Free Press.
The numbers of migrants began falling in President Joe Biden’s last year in office, says a Nov. 10, 2025 report from BBC News. It contrasts the situation last November with a year prior: “Sites that were once teeming with migrants lie largely silent. ... Then, when US President Donald Trump came into office in January ... the regular flow of migrants into El Paso slowed to a trickle.” Many shelters closed.
But there are still needs.
Deacon Paul F. X. Covino and his wife, Anne, get together with Religious of the Assumption serving in Chaparral, New Mexico, four of whom lived in Worcester at one time or another.
When the Covinos arrived last year, the sisters had many suggestions for what they could do.
One was being immigration court observers. Deacon Covino said he and his wife received training, then went weekly to the El Paso Immigration Court to take notes on cases being heard.
“Those notes were fed into an online data bank which was used by immigration lawyers” in El Paso and around the United States, he said. The notes help the attorneys identify trends in the kind of cases being brought and how they are resolved, and what judges tell migrants about the process and their rights.
The Covinos said the cases they observed were of asylum seekers – people requesting refuge from persecution in their home countries – who had been permitted to stay in the U.S. until their cases were heard.
The Covinos said that, during the hearings they observed, the asylum-seekers’ cases were often continued and they would have to return to court with more evidence to support their request for asylum.
The couple said they did not observe cases in which the request for asylum was turned down and the migrants were detained or deported. Nor did they observe the rare cases in which people were granted asylum.
Attorneys gave migrants legal advice. Assumptionists, Religious of the Assumption and others sat and prayed with those waiting for hearings and offered practical help, such as moving detainees’ vehicles when needed, Deacon Covino said.
Religious of the Assumption and the Assumptionist-staffed parishes are among those providing meals and transportation for migrants awaiting hearings, who are unable to get jobs.
Another service rendered is public prayer. Deacon Covino said he and his wife joined an ecumenical group that prayed peacefully outside the courthouse weekly.
“We always prayed for the migrants … their families … the people working in the court system … law enforcement … including ICE,” he said.
St. Patrick’s, the Catholic cathedral in El Paso, hosts a monthly interfaith prayer service, Deacon Covino said, telling of a Catholic priest preaching, a rabbi examining a Jewish approach to migration, and an evangelical minister sharing how she believes evangelicals should view migration in light of Scripture.
Deacon Covino also told of participating in a Mass in the desert outside El Paso, where migrants’ remains have been found and removed.
“There was something very poignant about celebrating Mass where someone has died trying to get into our country,” he said.
Also poignant, he said, was the annual Mass at the border, which this year Bishop Mark J. Seitz, bishop of El Paso, celebrated on the U.S. side of the wall (a barbed-wire fence), a number of feet in from the border of the Rio Grande.
“There was a real feeling of sadness this year” because Mexicans couldn’t participate or even see the Mass, given the fence and distance, Deacon Covino said. (In the past, the Mass was celebrated on a platform over the Rio Grande, enabling people of both countries to participate.)
Deacon Covino said it is wonderful that Bishop Seitz speaks out, and that a big part of parish life in the area is being hospitable to migrants, though “not every Catholic feels the same way about this.” While hardly anyone crosses the border now, care still needs to be provided for those already in the U.S., he said. He said he and his wife were impressed by the collaboration among those offering this care in a variety of ways – people of faith and others working well together.
It was also impressive that these people treated the adversary “with the same dignity they were advocating for the migrant.” While there’s always a place for protest, “there’s also, especially for Christians, the mandate to treat your adversary as a brother or sister,” Deacon Covino said. He said migrants’ advocates were respectful even to ICE officers, who returned that respect.
“Not everybody who works with ICE is evil,” Mrs. Covino said, but some are “very unkind people.” She said migrants told her of their heartbreak when their children took jobs with ICE or detention centers that pay more than other jobs, and of families being divided for their safety or unable to get together due to check points and fear.
Now that they’re back in Massachusetts, the Covinos are seeking how to help migrants here.
“That has always been an interest of mine,” said Mrs. Covino, who, as a nurse, worked extensively with Spanish-speakers.
The couple said they attend Worcester Interfaith Network for Immigration Support (WINIS) meetings to become aware of things happening locally. They’re also hoping to get trained to be observers in immigration court in Boston.
– A Prayer Service for Human Dignity and Life, open to the public, will be 4-4:30 p.m. March 16 in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit at Assumption University.