Banning migrants and asylum seekers from accessing welfare support “is not right or fair”, the Vatican’s lead cardinal on migration has said.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, undersecretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, told a Tablet webinar that “no recourse to public funds (NRPF)” is a “pompous formula which is supposed to be fiscally responsible”.
NRPF conditions are attached to some refugees in the UK, although he declined to comment on any particular country’s policy.
The Jesuit, whose own family fled Czechoslovakia in 1948 to begin their life again in Canada, noted that the needs of migrants and refugees were being met “as much as individual citizens, communities, churches, groups have been able to muster” and “often without much help from the state because the state seems to have other priorities which don’t correspond to what people really
“We are already stepping in where the government claims that it cannot or should not or won’t because they are afraid of a hand- ful of loud voters or squawkers, whom I’m not sure even vote. In a way it is submission to bullying,” Cardinal Czerny said.
He also voiced support for Mother Mechthild Thurmer, the German abbess who is facing trial for sheltering refugees at her monastery, the Abbey of Maria Frieden in the Bavarian town of Kirchschletten.
In response to a question about the concrete steps members of the Church can take to overcome that indifference towards migrants and refugees, the cardinal cited Pope Francis’ appeal in 2015 to every parish, every religious community, and every monastery to sponsor one family.
“I think that in other countries if the reception and settling of migrants and refugees were less bureaucratised, less profession- alised and entrusted to ordinary people” such as the members of parishes and of religious communities and monasteries it might be better, he said.
“I am a great believer in the practicality of charity,” he added as he criticised the media for its constant portrayal of the issue as a “global crisis”.
Information on how to sponsor a refugee family can be found here.
In the next Tablet event, Catholic Social Thought post-Covid, Shelagh Fogarty talks to Maurice Glasman. Book here.
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