What a Modesto Meeting Says About the Francis Church

For a pope challenging cautious clerics to leave the comfort of the cathedral and get their shoes dirty organizing with the poor, Francis's most tangible expression of his emphasis on bringing the peripheries to the center is the World Meeting of Popular Movements. The Modesto meeting was the first of its kind ever held in the United States. This city is not a high-profile spot on the media, financial, or political maps. The lead organizers of the gathering—PICO National Network, the U.S. bishops' Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Vatican's department for Integral Human Development—chose the location because Modesto brings into sharp focus core themes on the meeting's agenda: economic inequality, high rates of incarceration for young people of color, the disproportionate impact environmental degradation has on the poor, and the myriad challenges faced by a large population of undocumented immigrants.