Headline-grabbing civil rights marches are adorned with banners of Our Lady of Guadalupe and accented in Spanish.

Catholic bishops top lists of speakers at rallies. Priests take up the campaign's themes of moral responsibility and human rights, preaching on the topic to sometimes unsupportive parishioners who see things differently and don't hesitate to challenge the church's voice.

Work boycotts, hunger strikes and cries of "Si, se puede," or "Yes, you can," become hallmarks of the movement.

Many images and voices of this year's immigrant rights campaign could have come straight out of the farmworker rights efforts led a generation earlier by labor organizer Cesar Chavez.

Chavez, a Catholic well-versed in the church's social justice teachings, drew on Scripture, papal encyclicals and the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi as well as the pacifist philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in seeking justice for farmworkers.

One of Chavez's first successful large-scale events was what he called a pilgrimage, a 300-mile walk from the farms of Delano, Calif., to the state capitol in Sacramento in 1966. It began on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, and concluded on Easter, April 10. That procession was dotted with images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, flags representing unions, the United States and Mexico, and large crosses carried by some "pilgrims," some of whom were housed overnight at churches along the way.

Later activities Chavez led for the United Farm Workers prominently featured his strong Catholic faith, as noted in the biography "The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement," by Susan Ferriss and Ricardo Sandoval.

A volatile May 1967 strike at a Delano ranch was turned into more of a peaceful prayer vigil, when Chavez asked his brother to quickly construct a portable shrine in the back of a pickup, at which both strikers and strikebreakers prayed. When Chavez stopped eating for 25 days in 1968, again in pursuit of calming violence, he didn't call it a hunger strike but a fast, the term associated with a form of prayer, and broke it only with a few beverages and the Eucharist.

Gaston Espinosa, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., told journalists in a May 9 teleconference that as in the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s, many leaders of today's immigration campaign have been shaped by their religious faith.

Whether by design or coincidence, much of the rhetoric of the campaign for comprehensive immigration legislation "could almost overlay with the rhetoric of the 1960s," Espinosa said.

With the current battle to pass comprehensive immigration legislation, the Catholic Church has been a conspicuous voice amid the hundreds of grass-roots, community, business and religious organizations in one of the most diverse coalitions ever united behind one cause.

A year ago the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops launched its Justice for Immigrants campaign, seeking to educate everyday Catholics and politicians about the church's social justice-based philosophy of the rights of immigrants. Its materials are now in use in dioceses and parishes across the country.

With its programs of legal aid, refugee resettlement and other services for immigrants, the Catholic Church has long been involved in trying to shape immigration policy. But that role has largely gone unnoticed among the majority of American Catholics, not to mention the general public.

That began to change with Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony's widely reported declaration in February that he would ask priests of his archdiocese to break the law rather than comply with provisions of a House-passed bill that would criminalize the act of offering aid to illegal immigrants. The provision is not expected to survive ongoing Senate debate over immigration legislation.

Several other cardinals as well as dozens of bishops and priests have echoed the cardinal's pledge of civil disobedience as well as headlined rallies and hosted prayer vigils.

But Cardinal Mahony, who grew up working alongside migrants on his family's poultry ranch, has continued to be one of the most visible leaders of the campaign. For example, he has appeared several times on the top-rated Spanish-language Los Angeles radio show credited with helping draw hundreds of thousands of people to California immigration events.

At an immigration lobby day in Washington May 17, Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Oscar A. Solis made it clear in meetings with senators and congressional staffers that he was representing Cardinal Mahony in asking members of Congress to do more than expand border enforcement.

Bishop Solis and several Los Angeles priests as well as Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Muslim and Jewish delegates from Southern California delivered hundreds of thousands of postcards to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., asking for comprehensive immigration reform.

"We just want our elected officials to see the compassion side of the issue," Bishop Solis said in one meeting. "These are our brothers and sisters."

A few days later, at the annual Keepers of the American Dream awards dinner hosted by the National Immigration Forum, speaker after speaker singled out the role of the Catholic Church in speaking for immigrants.

"Our friends in the Catholic Church took a bold stand against criminalization" of those who offer humanitarian aid to illegal immigrants, said Immigration Forum director Frank Sharry.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., honored by the forum, called Cardinal Mahony "a great visionary" for his upfront role.

Sharry also noted the religious character of immigration events, saying Washington's first big rally in March --- which drew an estimated 40,000 people, far beyond organizers' expectations --- was unlike any other he had experienced

"I felt like I was at Sunday Mass," he said.

---CNS