How We Journey Together: One Practitioner on Accompaniment

The following has been adapted from a longer conversation and edited for clarity.

Santa Clara Magazine: Tell us about accompaniment and what it means to you. How did you see it in action in your work with Jesuit Refugee Service?

Tom Smolich, S.J.: The word accompaniment, which people use a lot these days, really entered our vocabulary sometime in the mid-’90s. I think it describes well what we do. That sense of walking with people, doing our best to listen to their stories, listen to what they need, and then do our best to accompany them in fulfilling what their desires are, what their dreams are.

SCM: How did that come to play in your work with JRS?

Smolich: The Church often uses the phrase “vulnerable migrants” for people who are forced to leave their homes for any number of reasons, some of which fit into legal categories and some of which don’t—people who, in a sense, see no other alternative. It’s within the context of the Church’s mission and Jesuits’ role in particular that we walk with people, that we welcome people.

Leaving home is hard. It is not for the faint of heart. It is not for people who don’t have some courage. There’s a narrative out there that, you know, people leave to make it rich, or they’re con artists, or whatever. A cross-section of refugees is mixed with good and bad, like any cross-section of humanity. Most importantly, people are entitled to dream; people are entitled to fulfill the dreams that God gives them. Paying attention to where people’s greatest desires are is really important. And that’s where JRS comes in.

JRS tends to occupy a middle space, where people have left home and are figuring out what comes next. It’s a very vulnerable time, a very delicate time. That’s what JRS does best. More often than not, the work includes the process of listening to people and of helping people deal with trauma. As relevant, there’s a spiritual component; there’s a reconciliation component; there’s a healing component that hopefully can help people, too. That is accompaniment.

Smolich: I never imagined I’d be doing that job. This is one of those things that when (the head of the Jesuit order) Father Superior General says jump, you say, How high? I think one of the experiences that best prepared me was actually long before—my first assignment after ordination was at Dolores Mission in East Los Angeles. That’s where Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J. founded Homeboy Industries (which today is considered one of the largest and most famous gang intervention programs in the world). I spent seven years there. It was an experience of accompanying immigrant families, mostly from Mexico, and refugee families from Central America—El Salvador, mostly Guatemala, and Honduras. In a sense, I came to know immigration stories by pastoral accompaniment at that point. That really formed my priesthood. I think it gave me a way of imagining myself in the JRS job and imagining how we might do our work accompanying refugees throughout the world.

Smolich: One thing that stays with me was a trip to Cameroon, which borders the Central African Republic, a country that has had more than its share of turmoil. One of the projects that we were involved in was a reconciliation.

By way of background, in eastern Cameroon, the communities were, by and large, Christian and, by and large, farmers. The people who were fleeing the closest part of Central African Republic were, by and large, Muslim, and, by and large, herders. So this is like the Old West—ranchers vs. farmers. You also had this religious divide. And resources are always scarce to some degree. So how do you deal with this?

The way we were working was talking to both groups. One thing they had in common was that they wanted education for their children. That was a sine qua non for both. In this village, we were able to come up with the idea that these two communities build a kindergarten together. Ultimately, it would grow into an elementary school. To pay a portion of what would be the teacher’s salary, the community had to come together. By having a common project, and the kids learning together, you build a sense of respect. You build a sense of welcome.

After that, they set up corridors through the farmland so that the cows could move through and not trample everything. My visit was toward the end of that, and one of the Muslim leaders said, “We are welcomed here, and we are respected here.” That was something that stayed with me. There were all sorts of challenges before them, and still, they found a way to not just coexist, but to focus on what was important to both of them for their futures. I thought, that’s accompaniment: walking with people, helping, and giving them some tools to make that work.

SCM: What makes for successful accompaniment and creates space in which projects like this can succeed?

Smolich: Listening to people’s stories is really important. As the international director, I visited close to 50 of the countries that we were present in. The best were visits where I had the chance to talk with people and hear their stories. Just to hear what somebody says, to hear her voice, to hear her tell her story, makes a huge difference in terms of how we respond. It becomes less transactional and more person-to-person.

As Martin Buber [the Jewish theologian known for his work on the philosophy of dialogue] used to say, I-Thou. It becomes an I-Thou relationship rather than an I-It or I-Them relationship.

SCM: In the current environment, these kind of relationships can feel far away. The world is so divided. What do you recommend so we can all accompany one another better?

Smolich: I think, ultimately, to get to a place like that is a conversion process for all of us, and it’s a conversion that happens by listening to one another’s stories.

Everywhere there are stories waiting to be heard. So how do we give people not just the freedom but the invitation to share those stories? I think it also has to happen on a more global level. This is a moment that is not a pretty one from my point of view. How do we move through it? That is a very much a part of Catholic social teaching; it’s a part of our theology. We come at it from a Christian value perspective, a Catholic social teaching perspective. It may have different labels, but it’s fundamentally a respect for the human family, and how do we be inclusive in that?

SCM: This is starting to sound like the Synod: bringing people together, especially those who may not have been invited in the past, to sit at round tables to talk and listen. An invitation to be heard and for someone to listen.

Smolich: In that sense, it’s really consistent with what Pope Francis and now Pope Leo are trying to say, that to become a listening church, to really have everyone at the table, we need to have a space for everyone at the table. We, I think, are blessed as Catholics, coming from our own theology, we believe in the unity of all human beings. In a sense, we would say that synodality, that bringing people around the table, is a restoration of the way things should be, the way God intends us to be. We’re fulfilling the call that all of us have been given.