The Archbishop of Westminster urged Christians last night “to walk the path of generosity and faith” in facing the challenge to welcome refugees.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will also use his Christmas sermon this morning to urge that refugees be welcomed and treated with compassion.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, in his homily at Midnight Mass at Westminster Cathedral, said the world was in a time of “great vulnerability”.
“It is tempting to counter that vulnerability by putting up barriers, by trying to make sure that I, or those close me, or citizens of wealthy countries, come first, whatever the cost,” he said.
“The vulnerability of the Christ-child challenges such thinking. Pope Francis addressed this challenge only this month, when he met a group of migrants in Nicosia. Echoing the words of St Paul, he said that God was encouraging ‘a dream of humanity freed from the walls of division and hostility, where there are no longer strangers, but only fellow-citizens’.
Speaking about his visit a few years ago to a family of refugees in Erbil in Iraq, Cardinal Nichols said: “They had fled their home in a matter of hours, bringing only what they could carry, and now lived in a converted shipping container. From them, I received the most generous of welcomes, truly being treated not as a stranger, but as a fellow-citizen, someone seeking to walk, like them, the pathways of the Christian faith. Vulnerability had not overwhelmed them.
“Vulnerability is close to us this Christmas, even as we sit in this great Cathedral, with its reassuring solidity. The example of the refugee family inspires us. We too face the challenge of welcoming refugees. We are vulnerable in the face of the unknowable path of the coronavirus. Can we too take inspiration from those like that refugee family, and see what we can do to ensure that, alongside the pathway of vulnerability, we walk the pathways of generosity and of faith? That is the pathway of life.”
Earlier, in an interview with the BBC Cardinal Nichols argued against another closure of churches if new Covid restrictions are introduced after Christmas.
He said people can make good judgements themselves and understand the risks.
“We don't need stronger impositions to teach us what to do.”
The archbishop was speaking before Midnight Mass at Westminster Cathedral.
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