EL PASO — Twenty years ago, Amelia Lopez Patrykus stood outside the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, waiting for a free meal and groceries. The line was just blocks from the Rio Grande, separating Mexico from its new home in the United States.
She had just arrived from Jalisco, Mexico, with her children, and in those first few years in Texas, the Church provided a lifeline, with staples like rice and cans of tomatoes, and spiritual and educational support. It’s where her daughter sang in the choir and made her First Communion, and where Mrs. Lopez Patrykus took free adult education classes and found a job — at La Tilma, the restaurant that offered her that early meal.
In the center of El Segundo Barrio, where many Mexican immigrants live in poverty, Sacred Heart is known by the mostly Spanish-speaking residents as a place to get help for rent, take English lessons and find a hot meal.
Named for the robe St. Juan Diego wore when the Virgin of Guadalupe is said to have appeared in Mexico nearly 500 years ago, La Tilma has been a community mainstay since it opened in 2003, run by a chef who often trusts dishes. to these new immigrants from Mexico.
Fish or vegetarian specials, such as lentil soup, enchiladas, and capirotada — a type of Mexican bread pudding served only in the run-up to Easter — appear on Fridays during Lent, when many Christians forgo red meat.
“If it’s not good, I won’t eat it,” says Dolores Dominguez, 88, who lives in a social housing facility nearby. If La Tilma didn’t exist, her kids would have to drive from a nearby Native American reservation to help her, she said.
Before the pandemic, La Tilma served a full Mexican menu on weekends, including plates of huevos rancheros, burritos, and aguas frescas, for less than $5 to the public. Parishioners drank menudo, a traditional Mexican soup, after Sunday Mass, and church staff delivered meals to older adults in the area. Some time ago, an undocumented immigrant even delivered food to immigration officials on the Paso del Norte International Bridge that connects El Paso to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
The pandemic forced La Tilma to close the restaurant completely and switch to strict takeout. But on Easter Sunday, the restaurant plans to reopen to the public.
“We will reopen on the Day of the Resurrection,” said Father Rafael Garcia, 69, the priest in charge of the Sacred Heart. “It’s a time of new life.”
Meals are available here for anyone who needs them, no questions asked. For many days, Ms. Lopez Patrykus can be found nearby with a cart full of takeaway from La Tilma, feeding migrants, the homeless, abused women and men waiting for temporary work. They call her “Mami” or “La Jefita”, which means little boss.
She is second in command after James Martinez, the restaurant’s chef, who took over the kitchen in 2005. On a recent fast Friday, Mrs. Lopez Patrykus scooped pans of pico de gallo into a large tub of lentil soup. Rice portions, flavored with chicken stock and coriander, joined with snow peas, broccoli, mushrooms, pumpkin and carrots coated in a spicy yellow curry sauce in takeaway containers.
“When I crossed, the church helped me a lot with food,” said Ms. Lopez Patrykus, 63, in Spanish. Her 12 years at La Tilma have become a way for her to give back to others in return for how the Church has helped her. “God will help us when we need it.”
La Tilma provides meals and groceries to approximately 250 families. Volunteers fill shopping bags with staples such as rice, pinto beans, noodles, peanut butter and tomatoes.
Catering helps pay for this outreach. In 2018, its most profitable year, La Tilma made approximately $220,000 preparing food for weddings, diocese events, and quinceañeras. Various grants, donations and money from the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order – also known as Jesuits – and food donations from organizations such as El Pasoans Fighting Hunger make all the difference.
During Lent, La Tilma employees and volunteers cut hundreds of tomatoes and onions every week. Dried red chiles are cooked for hours for vegetarian enchiladas rojas. Bread is sliced and toasted for capirotada.
For his version of that bread pudding, Mr. Martinez mixes the toasted bread with a sauce of unsweetened evaporated milk, butter, brown sugar, Abuelita hot chocolate, and cappuccino mix. Coconut shavings, peanuts and raisins provide the flavor, and Münster cheese and rainbow sprinkles provide the finishing touch.
“I don’t want to see any white,” shouted Mr. Martinez, 54, referring to tortillas as a volunteer scooped salsa roja over a tray of enchiladas.
Mr. Martinez trains the volunteers to prepare and portion food as he would a sous chef in a restaurant.
“I tell them to just be generous,” he said. “Échale,” he added in Spanish, meaning “Go for it.” Sacred Heart has a long history of community outreach. The only parish left in Texas by this order was founded in 1893 for Spanish-speaking Catholics and staffed by the Jesuits.
Today, the majority of El Paso’s more than 865,000 residents identify as Catholic, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso.
“Their relationship with God is very important,” Father Daniel Mora, 42, said in Spanish of the church’s mostly Mexican-American parishioners.
The church serves only a small portion of El Paso’s needy. El Pasoans Fighting Hunger, the only food bank in the area, feeds about 200,000 people insecure about food. Nearly 18 percent of the county’s residents live in poverty, about six percentage points higher than the national average, according to census data. In 2020, the median median household income here was only about $48,000, about $19,000 less than the national number.
The area’s proximity to Ciudad Juárez makes El Paso a largely immigrant community. Nearly 83 percent of the county’s residents are Hispanic or Latino, and nearly 70 percent of households here speak a language other than English.
Upholding human dignity, especially for the poor, is the mission of the Sacred Heart, said Mr. Garcia, the pastor of the church. That’s why mr. Martinez not afraid to put quality first. If donated products are rotting, he will apologize and send it away.
For Mr. Martinez, a good meal is one with texture, and he tries to preserve that while cooking — keeping tomatoes and onions firm in the pico de gallo and crisp with the peanuts in the capirotada. He wants the people who get his food to know exactly what they are getting.
“Everything I do is a standard for myself,” said Mr. Martinez. “I wouldn’t market anything that I wouldn’t serve myself, eat myself, or offer to someone else.”
La Tilma, 602 South Oregon Street, El Paso, 915-532-5447, Sacredheartelpaso.org/la-tilma.
