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BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
17 August 2026
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS 14AUG26
28 July 2026
South Texas Nun Detained by ICE Faces Uncertain Future in U.S. 24JUL26
South Texas Nun Detained by ICE Faces Uncertain Future in U.S.
The South Texas nun who was detained by immigration officers last month spoke publicly for the first time since the incident and as her future in the country remains in limbo.
Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, a 56-year-old nun from Nigeria, was walking the short distance from her home to Our Lady of Sorrows to distribute the Holy Communion at Mass when she was stopped by two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on June 28.
“Even when I told them, ‘Can I go to Mass; can I just attend Mass; can I receive communion,’ the answer was ‘No,’” Ugboaja said.
ICE released Ugboaja later that day, but she now faces a check-in appointment with immigration officials on July 28.
Her attorney, Carlos M. Garcia, said they hope the check-in is determined to be unnecessary and that Ugboaja will not have to report to ICE, after all. If she does, officials could decide to detain her again or place an ankle monitor on her.
“We are asking that she not be detained and that no ankle monitor be placed on a person who has broken no rule, posed no danger, and given this country a decade of nursing and a lifetime of ministry,” Garcia said.
Ugboaja has lived in South Texas and worked as a registered nurse at various hospitals in the area for more than a decade.
READ MORE: Some Ice Agents Want Out. Christians Can Help Them
After news of her detention broke, federal U.S. lawmakers who represent the Rio Grande Valley denounced her arrest and said they would try to intervene to secure her release.
In 2019, a judge denied her request for asylum but simultaneously granted her protection from removal to Nigeria under the United Nations Convention Against Torture based on the finding that it was more likely than not that she would be tortured if she returned there.
But because her asylum claim was denied, Ugboaja is technically under a final order of removal, Garcia said.
He added that Ugboaja has done everything asked of her since that 2019 order, including holding a valid work permit, complying with every condition of the protection order, and attending every mandatory appointment with immigration officials.
In detaining her last month, officials sought to deport her not to Nigeria, but to a third country, Garcia said.
The practice of third-country removals have been used under President Donald Trump’s second term to shore up deportations of people who could not legally be deported to their home countries because of the likelihood they would be persecuted there.
Ugboaja said she did not want to remain silent about her situation and wants people in similar situations to have the opportunity to tell their story before they’re taken from their homes.
“I believe every person in this situation, like me, deserves to be heard, deserves to be listened to, deserves to be given attention and opportunity,” she said.
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
Berenice Garcia is a regional reporter covering the Rio Grande Valley. She works at the Tribune as a corps members with Report for America.
02 June 2026
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS 2JUN26
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07 May 2026
VIDEO & ARTICLE: What Happened When the Pope Had to Call Customer Service 5MAI26
THIS is hysterical! Having worked for decades in customer service I probably wouldn't have hung up on the customer for telling me he was the pope. I checked for an update on the employee, there is no record of her being fired. This from the New York Times.....
AND THEN THEY TOLD POPE LEO......16APR26
What Happened When the Pope Had to Call Customer Service
Reporting from Chicago
Even the Vicar of Christ can be thwarted by a customer service representative.
About two months after Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, became Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City, he put in a call to his bank back home, a close friend, the Rev. Tom McCarthy, told a gathering of Catholics in Naperville, Ill., last week.
The new pope identified himself as Robert Prevost, saying that he wished to change the phone number and address that the bank had on file, Father McCarthy said.
The pope dutifully answered the security questions correctly.
Then, the woman on the line for the bank told him that it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to the branch in person.
“He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that,’” Father McCarthy said in a video clip shared on social media, recounting the new pope’s growing frustration as the audience laughed. “I gave you all the security questions.”
The bank employee apologized. The pope tried a different tack.
“Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked, according to Father McCarthy.
She hung up.
Even while leading more than one billion Catholics around the world and living in gilded splendor amid priceless works of art, popes can sometimes be entangled in the mundane, both accidentally and with purpose. In the first 24 hours of Pope Francis’ papacy in 2013, he insisted on paying his own hotel bill and collecting his own luggage, a gesture of humility to Catholic clergy.
Pope Leo rose from modest roots in Dolton, Ill., a small suburb just outside Chicago, before serving as a bishop in Peru and in an influential post at the Vatican when he was elected pope nearly one year ago.
Father McCarthy confirmed in an email that the story about the bank hassle was true. He had been telling a group of Catholics about his friendship with Pope Leo at an educational meeting geared toward men and boys at a Naperville church.
The priest is a well-known figure among Catholics on the South Side, an Augustinian and leader at St. Rita of Cascia High School. He first met Pope Leo in the 1980s in Chicago, where they grew up in similar working-class neighborhoods in the city and its close suburbs, and has visited the pope at the Vatican.
A spokesman for the Vatican did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the bank episode.
The matter was sorted out thanks to the intervention of another priest who had a connection to the bank president, Father McCarthy said.
There was no word on the customer service representative who had cut off her call with the bank’s most famous customer.
“Could you imagine being known as the woman who hung up on the pope?” Father McCarthy said.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
A version of this article appears in print on May 7, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Did You Hear the One About the Pope Calling Customer Service?.