If heaven does exist and if President Donald Trump somehow manages to cross its border, he will likely encounter two nuns who prayed outside the Broadview ICE detention center in suburban Chicago every week for 19 years.
JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy of the Sisters of Mercy became known as “Rabble” and “Rouser,” respectively, in the course of their mission. Murphy was 96 when she died on July 17. Persch, her holy sidekick, kept it up each Friday—in person if she was able, on Zoom if not. She also planned to make a brief trip to New York in early December to cheer a priest who was walking 800 miles from Pope Leo XIV’s childhood home to Ellis Island in support of immigrants.
“I will be in New York late afternoon on Dec. 1st and leave midday on Dec. 3rd,” she texted me on Nov. 10. “When I am ready for my trip, I will text you with where we will be in New York.”
But she died four days later, at 91.
Visitation is scheduled for Sunday at Sisters of Mercy Hall on S. Central Park Ave. in Chicago. The funeral mass will be held 10 a.m. Monday at St. Barnabas Catholic Church on Longwood Drive. It will be livestreamed.
At an outdoor All Saints’ Day Mass attended by 2,000 people across from the Broadview facility 23 days before her funeral, Persch was one of eight eucharistic ministers who sought to bring communion to immigrants inside who had been grabbed during recent Border Patrol sweeps and were being held without beds or showers. ICE denied them entrance and the other seven delegated Persch to inform the faithful. She asked to precede the announcement with a request for everyone to remain silent, no matter what they felt.
Persch walked back to the gathering and made the anticipatory request for silence. She then reported an update that some might have expected would trigger boos and angry shouts.
”The answer was ‘no.’”
The response, however, was a testament to the power of moral authority possessed by someone who actively lived the gospel for decade after decade.
“I was amazed,” Persch told me afterwards. “Two thousand people—it was dead silent. There were tears, but for several minutes, they were so respectful of that moment, which was a very sacred moment.”
Should Persch ever be a candidate for sainthood, the total hush could go down as a possible miracle.
The itinerary she had set for her visit to New York would have had her back in Chicago for the regular Friday prayers outside the Broadview facility that she and Murphy had begun in the early morning darkness of Friday, Jan. 5, 2007. Friday was deportation day there and an immigration lawyer had asked them to join him in praying for a group of migrants being sent off despite all his best efforts.
“It was literally 20 below zero, not just wind chill,” Persch recalled when I interviewed her two weeks ago. “We were out there in the bitter cold, watching families just being torn apart because their loved ones were being ripped from their lives.”
Persch remembered watching the deportees being loaded onto buses and vans for the ride to the airport.
“What struck me is they’re being moved like pieces on a chessboard,” she recalled. “They have no control over their lives.”
She and Murphy then returned to their car.
“We looked at each other, and we said, ‘We have to be here every week,’” she remembered. “And so we have for 19 years. We’ve been there in rain and snow and ice and freezing and boiling hot.”
They began what Persch calls a “hug ministry” outside the facility,
“Families were traumatized and they’d come up to us, and what could we say but just hold them and let them express their grief,” she remembered.
As it happened, Persch died on a Friday, proceeding from this mortal realm on a Deportation Day in a time when hugs are more needed than ever.
And when Trump muses aloud whether he will get into heaven, he should consider two nuns who are no doubt there, if it exists at all. Their example should give him the likely answer.
But that could change if they inspire him to change. And therein would be another miracle, born of actual moral authority, which is more powerful than the power that gets him high—but not as high as heaven.
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