MISSION, Texas _ Just after 6:30 a.m., under a cold drizzle and black morning sky, Father Roy Snipes pulls the cord of an old bell and calls the faithful to Mass. Inside the peeling whitewashed La Lomita chapel, the priest puts on his green robes and tells the parishioners about the previous day's court hearing.
"The judge just didn't understand the nature of our relationship to this chapel," he says in the darkened sanctuary, lit by flicker of votive candles. "There is so much meanness right now. This whole chapel stands for the hospitality of the people where we come from."
He proposes an idea: holding another round of nine sunrise Masses, a novena, to register the flock's opposition to the coming border wall.
"Can't hurt," calls out a voice from the darkness.
La Lomita has stood near the banks of the Rio Grande for nearly two centuries, since its founding by Oblate Missionaries who proselytized the countryside on horseback. The humble sanctuary gave its name to the surrounding town of Mission, and residents still consider it the area's mother church.
But the chapel sits a few dozen feet south of the Hidalgo County flood control levee, which federal officials designated as the path for an 18-foot-high steel border fence and a surrounding enforcement zone of floodlights and roads for U.S. Border Patrol vehicles.
For months, Father Roy has been leading the fight to save La Lomita from ending up on the south side of a border fence, planned as part of 33 miles of barrier funded in a 2018 spending bill. It will be the first new border barrier built in Texas under President Donald Trump. "I'm worried sick," Roy said before the anti-wall Mass. "It's almost the opposite symbol of our lady of refuge."
Last week, the priest's efforts, along with months of protest from Rio Grande Valley residents, elected officials and nature enthusiasts, may have paid off. As part of a last-minute deal to keep the federal government open, lawmakers carved out an exception for La Lomita, even as they approved $1.3 billion to pay for an additional 55 new miles of border fencing in the Rio Grande Valley.
