Francisca Lino
To say that the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago’s Humboldt Park district is small would be an understatement. The church’s storefront window could barely hold the eclectic manger scene that had taken over the space when I stopped in to see Francisca Lino, a 51-year-old mother of six. Originally from Mexico, but having lived and worked in the U.S. for the past 18 years, Francisca has now been in sanctuary at the church for nearly two years.
Adalberto was quite a contrast to many of the sanctuary operations I have visited in the past year. In some places, a single large church with dozens of volunteers support the person in sanctuary. In other places several churches with hundreds of volunteers have come together to meet the needs of an individual or family in sanctuary. Adalberto is a tiny church that couldn’t hold more than 30 people on a busy Sunday. Its activist pastor has to work a day job just to pay the church’s rent and keep the doors open. Yet despite such challenges, Francisca is the third person protected by sanctuary in this church that clearly has more faith and willpower than resources. No army of volunteers here. Francisca shares Pastor Jacobita Cortez’ small apartment upstairs from the sanctuary along with the pastor’s daughter and two grandchildren.
On the day she was to be deported, Francisca had already purchased her plane ticket and packed her clothes, but on the way to the airport she decided to take sanctuary in the church she had been attending faithfully for 15 years.
“I just could not leave my family,” she says.
Since entering sanctuary nearly two years ago, life for her family has been hard. Her husband works long nightshifts and now struggles to support the family financially without the money Francisca once made. Her oldest daughter, now 18, is struggling with depression. Even though the family regularly visits on weekends, Francisca admits that she doesn’t feel like she is really there for her husband and children. “No one can prepare for this. No one can prepare to be separated from the people you love and who need you,” she says.
Later in the afternoon, Francisca shows me a picture of her family that hangs on the wall in the sanctuary. Her husband and five of her children are present. There is a birthday cake in the center with two candles, a one and a six. Her 16-year-old twin daughters are seated at the cake ready to blow out the candles. As Francisco explains the photo to me, her eyes fill with tears. She explains that the photo was taken last year at the church after she had taken sanctuary. She said it was hard to celebrate such an important day in that way. She then confides that “tomorrow is their 17th birthday,” and that the family will once again be celebrating the event at the church where Francisca has, for all intents and purposes, imprisoned herself in order to keep her family together in at least some fashion. “I never thought I would still be here a year later,” she says. “I hope this is the last time we have to do it here.”
It wasn’t.