Duka defends eastern Europe on refugees

The leader of the Czech Catholic Church has rejected widespread criticism of the refugee policy of east European EU members, and explained why these countries prefer to take Christian refugees.

Speaking to the Slovakian weekly Tyzden on 14 December Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said he was “deeply ashamed” of the stance some east European countries had adopted towards refugees. Countries including Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary have been reluctant to admit non-Christian refugees.

One million Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Somalis have travelled to Europe, with terrorists crossing the borders alongside genuine asylum seekers.

Cardinal Dominik Duka OP of Prague told the Slovakian daily Denník N in a Christmas interview that frontier controls were essential in dealing with the present wave of migrants in order to separate genuine refugees from “people with other intentions”.

It was crucial to proceed rationally in the present crisis, as “compassion and emotion without reasonable behaviour lead to hell”, Cardinal Duka warned.

At the moment, refugees were being let into Europe “without any control whatsoever”, he said, as the countries responsible had “completely failed to do their duty”. And yet the present wave of refugees was being used to “carry out certain jihadist plans and programmes”. It was imperative to check “whose lives are actually threatened, who is really in need of help and who is fulfilling a different mission”, he underlined.

The Czech Republic was “above all prepared to take in Christian refugees” because Christians had been permanently persecuted in the Middle East since the Armenians were driven out of the Ottoman Empire 100 years ago, and they were not receiving support from anyone now, Cardinal Duka said. The present refugees, moreover, were not interested in coming to the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Hungary.