Priest Walks 800 Miles to Liberty Island, In Defense of Immigrants
Father Gary Graf has completed a nearly two-month trek all the way from the Chicago suburb where Pope Leo XIV’s boyhood home is located, to the Statue of Liberty. At a warm reception on Dec. 2, Graf said that “to wound [immigrants] is to wound the heart of God.”
| 03 Dec 2025 | 05:47
Father Gary Graf has walked 800 miles from the boyhood home of Pope Leo in Illinois to NYC, which took him nearly two months, to signal solidarity with the United States’s (and NYC’s) immigrant community. (
)
Graf speaking at a Dec. 2 reception in honor of his journey, where he called immigrants his “brothers and sisters.” (
)
At the Dec. 2 event, Graf’s companion Estefania spoke of her dream that all immigrants are “welcomed...as holy.” (
)
A priest has walked all the way from Pope Leo XIV’s Illinois hometown to the Statute of Liberty, a trek that spanned roughly 800 miles, in defense of immigrant rights. He arrived in New York City on the blustery morning of Dec. 2, and was provided with a warm reception hosted by an interfaith group.
Father Gary Graf, who walked an average of 17 miles a day after setting out on Oct. 6, fell off a horse mid-journey while visiting a parish in Indiana; he broke multiple ribs. It did not deter him. In a home-stretch interview on Nov. 24, Graf told the Catholic News Agency that his ribs were “getting much better,” although he noted that a shin had begun giving him “a little pain.”
Graf, perhaps lifted by the steadfastness of his mission, appeared serene at the Dec. 2 ceremony held in his honor. He patiently listened in a front row seat as faith leaders representing multiple religions praised his work, as well as emphasized their opposition to current federal immigration policy, such as the ICE raids that have occurred in New York City and other municipalities.
A local children’s choir also provided a spirited introduction to the proceedings, which were held indoors at 55 Broadway due to inclement weather.
In one instance, the Reverend Dr. Chloe Breyer—who serves as the Executive Director of the Interfaith Center of New York, and is former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s daughter—began her speech by acknowledging Advent.
Breyer appeared to tie the Biblical account of John the Baptist instructing Christians to “prepare the way for the lord” to Graf’s journey, as well as said a prayer for “lifting up the lowly,” in a seeming reference to the plight of refugees.
When Graf stepped up to speak, he began by mentioning the “new friends” he had made over the course of his journey, which he called “the holy race of my life.”
“The walk is finished, the miles are behind me, but the mission is still ahead of us,” Graf said. “My feet may rest, but my spirit cannot rest—not while immigrant children cry alone, not when families are torn apart...[and] treated as anything less than human.”
“I walk because immigrants are not strangers, they are our brothers and sisters, and to wound them is to wound the very heart of God,” he added. He explained that he himself was partly descended from Irish immigrants, and spoke at length on the sociological concept known as “drawbridge theory,” whereby older immigrant generations “pull up the drawbridge” on newer ones.
Partway through Graf’s comments, he was joined by a young woman named Estefania, who began to speak in unison with him. “We have walked together, we have listened, we have told our stories, and still...we dream,” they both said, hands clasped.
Graf then stepped back from the mic, with his hands over his heart, while Estefania carried the theme forward. Her powerful rework of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial was all but unmistakable, if left unspoken.
“I have a dream that nobody in this nation will ever again feel invisible, that every story—old or new, carried here by boat or border crossing—is welcomed here as holy,” she said. “When we tell who we are, we stop being shadows. We become human again. We become family.”