‘Give time, money and shelter to refugees’

BISHOPS want Catholics to offer practical help, including a place to stay, to refugees caught up in the current crisis.

In a statement, the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales say people should consider donating time, skills such as legal help and language teaching, or money, and that such actions would make a valuable contribution to the humanitarian effort. 

The bishops also say the Catholic community could assist by providing refugees with shelter and accommodation in coordination with local authorities. “We can all be attentive to those who are vulnerable and newly arrived in our local communities and parishes,” they continue.

The bishops’ conference is working to ensure that every diocese has a contact nominated to coordinate parish and individual responses.

These coordinators will match offers of time, skills and accommodation with requests in the local area. The bishops have also set up a webpage to centralise resources (catholicnews.org.uk/refugee-crisis).

A spokesman for the bishops’ conference explained that because England and Wales are not covered by the Schengen Agreement, which allows freedom of ­movement across borders, accom­modation for refugees would be arranged by the Government.

Catholics who could offer accommodation would need to do so via the local authority.

“But that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of ways the Catholic community can contribute to helping them, and we want to find ways of doing that,” he added.

This week Prime Minister David Cameron pledged that the UK will accept up to 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years as its contribution to the international humanitarian ­crisis.

The bishops’ spokesman said that, as well as praying for the refugees, British Catholics would be able to make financial contributions, and there would also be opportunities to use their skills – English teachers, for example, might be able to offer to teach refugees.

The ways in which Catholics could help was underlined by Bishop Nicholas Hudson, auxiliary in Westminster, at an interfaith prayer gathering for refugees in central London this week.

“Let us be generous with our time, our skills and our resources,” the bishop told around 300 people of different faiths who had met on the piazza outside Westminster Cath­edral. In a message read out by Bishop Hudson, Cardinal Vincent Nichols said the presence of those who had gathered was proof of the solidarity that would be needed over the months and years ahead to help receive and settle thousands of people. “As Pope Francis said so powerfully on Sunday, that demands us to open our hearts in generosity and service to those who have lost everything,” wrote the cardinal.

As a Catholic community, he continued, “we have an essential role, along with civil society and local and national government, to ensure that our country plays its part”.

In Scotland, faith leaders including Archbishop Philip Tartaglia issued a joint statement welcoming the Government’s offer to take in refugees and urging practical action to welcome them.