‘Angels Unawares’: Traveling Bronze Sculpture Honoring Migrants Installed At Bayfront Park

Miami’s Bayfront Park received a new addition. The Angels Unawares statue was placed in Bayfront Park in the beginning of February 2021. The original sculpture was unveiled by Pope Francis in 2019 at St. Peter’s Square. When asked about the statue, Archbishop Thomas Wenski said the following:

"This is a great location for it. Again, it’s most of the highway so people can see it. But also they can walk by and take pictures of it as they visit Bayside, or any other place here in downtown Miami to see the face of everybody. The statue is a work of art that has traveled the world, has been in the Vatican, It represents the story of the human family, which is a story of migration. And here in South Florida, really Miami, is the Ellis Island of the south. And so the story of migration is the story of Miami. So this is a very apt statue to have visit with us and allow people to reflect on that story and to see themselves and the story of migration. The statue has figures and faces of migrants throughout history. You can see in that statue Mary and Joseph and the child Jesus, because they were refugees when they had to leave Egypt to escape King Herod,” Wenski said. “You have people that were brought here from Africa, so there are Africans there. There are immigrants from Europe and other countries. So it really puts the whole human family in the same boat.”