Migrant crisis will change Europe, says Schönborn

Cardinal Christoph Schön­born, at a memorial service in Vienna for the 71 migrants who suffocated in a refrigerator truck found abandoned in eastern Austria last week, said “all our lives” will be changed by the current migrant crisis.

It was high time “to emerge from our lethargy and resolutely to face what is without doubt the greatest humanitarian challenge for Europe in decades”, the cardinal said in his sermon at St Stephen’s Cathedral on 31 August.

The present “large-scale migration will remain a reality and it will change all our lives”, the cardinal said. “The ghastly deaths on the Austrian A4 highway have made us aware of the fact that there is no other way open to us except to face this reality.”

At the Angelus last Sunday, Pope Francis asked the faithful to pray for the migrants, especially those who have lost their lives while in flight from situations of persecution, instability, and even social and economic failure. He said he joined his prayers to those of the Church in Austria, represented at the Angelus by Cardinal Schönborn, for those who perished inside the truck.

The burden of taking in refugees was not being equally shared by EU countries, Cardinal Schönborn said at St Stephen’s, calling for greater European solidarity. “It is unacceptable that some countries are only taking a minimum number and others are giving refuge to record numbers,” he said. “[This is] a very, very serious test as to whether our Christian heritage, the Gospel Message, is still alive and valid.”

In an article for thetablet.co.uk, Jorge Nuño Mayer, secretary general of Caritas Europa, said Britain’s and Europe’s identity “are not threatened by migrants and refugees, but by the danger of losing humanity as a core value of our culture and civilisation”.