WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Just over a week before tens of thousands of people were expected in Washington for a rally in support of immigration reform, President Barack Obama told grass-roots and faith leaders that he remains firmly committed to passing legislation this year.

For their part, participants in the meeting with Obama urged Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to release before the March 21 rally their plans for a comprehensive immigration bill -- an outline of which the senators brought to their own meeting with the president the same afternoon.

Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. bishops' migration committee, told Catholic News Service that he came away from the meeting with the president greatly encouraged about the prospects of getting reform legislation turned into law.

"We know his commitment is real," Bishop Wester said.

Over the last couple of months, Catholics around the country have been asked to sign postcards to their members of Congress urging them to back immigration reform that keeps families together, unclogs the system for legal immigration and provides an avenue for legalization for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants now in the country.

In recent weeks, bishops in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Oregon have published letters or columns or given speeches urging Catholics to support immigration reform as a Gospel call.

Many of those efforts echoed a sentiment expressed by Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis in his March 11 column in The Catholic Spirit, the archdiocesan newspaper.

"Welcoming the stranger is essential to our Catholic faith," he wrote. "This corporal work of mercy builds up the body of Christ, for in reaching out and welcoming the immigrant, we serve Christ himself: 'I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.'"

Bishop Wester said he would return to Washington for the March for America, as the March 21 event was being called. Along with Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, he planned to celebrate a Mass before the rally events began.

He said the one-hour meeting with the president included frank discussions of the political obstacles to getting immigration legislation passed, as well as persistent reminders from the participants about the human stories behind the problems with the current immigration system.

Other participants in the meeting with Obama included representatives of union, immigrant-aid and human rights organizations.

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