Cardinal-designate Joseph Tobin of Indianapolis has stressed the moral imperative for Americans to welcome refugees and combat the prevalent fear, anxiety and hostility shown towards individuals from the Middle East.
Speaking less than a week after Pope Francis named him a cardinal, along with 16 other prelates, Tobin addressed students at the University of Notre Dame in a talk entitled, ‘Welcoming the Stranger While Challenging the Fear’.
The Catholic News Service reported his address, including comments that contemporary American society is imbued with a fear of welcoming refugees, a fear that is rooted in the "well-publicised threats of terrorist groups, particularly the Islamic State".
This fear is perpetuated by the media in the US, he said, noting that "news programmes use a hierarchy now in determining what stories to place before the public conscience. And, put rather vulgarly, 'if it bleeds, it leads'. News is a for-profit industry and, I would argue, one that doesn't always strive to report the facts accurately. … Fear-based news stories prey on the anxieties we all have. … This attitude is particularly true in reporting facts from the Middle East", he added.
Another factor contributing to such fear, he said, is what he termed "boundary maintenance" or a reaction to globalisation that generates fear of the other.
The cardinal-designate, when asking the audience how the Catholic community should react to this fear, quoted Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, who urged "all Catholics in the United States and others of goodwill to express openness and welcoming to these refugees who are escaping desperate situations in order to survive. Regardless of their religious affiliation or national origin, these refugees are all human persons - made in the image of God, bearing inherent dignity, and deserving our respect and care and protection by law from persecution".
Tobin stressed that the federal government is responsible for immigration and refugee admissions to the United States and that governors ought to welcome refugees: "We need to encourage governors to continue to play their important welcoming role," he said.
He used the example from his own diocese of a family who were due to be welcomed by Catholic Charities last October, but after Indiana governor Mike Pence's statement on 16 November, that he would prevent refugees from settling in Indiana until the federal government could ensure property security measures were in place, the cardinal-designate was asked by the governor not to permit resettlement.
Tobin said the governor invited him to "pray and seek God's guidance, which I gladly did". The family was welcomed by the diocese and Catholic Charities and is now living in Indianapolis.
Praising the work of Catholic charities, Tobin encouraged the audience to reach out to a local refugee resettlement agency, saying this work would be impossible without volunteers.
According to the UN in 2015 an unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world were forced from their homes. Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. The countries hosting most refugees are Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon who took in a combined total of 5.2m refugees.
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