Appeal for more parishes to host refugee families

The Church in England and Wales has called for more parishes to sign up to the Government’s Community Sponsorship Scheme to help resettle refugees in the UK.

Speaking in an interview with London radio station LBC last week, Cardinal Vincent Nichols said that the scheme allows local communities to offer direct hospitality to a refugee family. “There are communities all over the country which I believe have the motivation to be of help, and now there is a vehicle,” he added. “I would like to encourage people to engage with that.”

So far at least 26 churches in England and Wales have applied to sponsor a refugee family. They include St Monica’s Church in the Diocese of Salford, which has welcomed a Syrian family. Corpus Christi church in Brixton, south London, has rehoused two families via the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme. Its parish priest Fr Adrian McKenna-Whyte said: “It is important to extend the hand of friendship to all God’s children, working together while celebrating our differences in a world which is so often about ‘me first’”.

Cardinal Nichols’ comments came the day after Caritas Westminster held an information evening to encourage more parishes and community groups to get involved in the scheme. Spokeswoman Martha Behan said the event was well attended, by around 70 people.

Paul McAleenan, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and Bishop for Migration opened the event and, alongside Rob Wickham, the Anglican Bishop of Edmonton and representatives from the Salvation Army, Citizens UK and Caritas Salford shared information concerning the practicalities of integrating refugees, touching on issues such as housing, safeguarding, language difficulties and cultural sensitivity.

Church Response for Refugees, which was set up to support 100 churches undertaking to become community sponsors by 2018, is working with groups at various stages of the application process. Spokeswoman Emily Mills said: “Many churches … can organise the community into action [with] volunteers, space, funding and sometimes spare properties.”

The scheme was launched last July by the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

n In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour, Cardinal Vincent Nichols spoke out against President Trump’s ban from seven mostly Muslim countries, stating it gives the “false notion” of conflict between Christianity and Islam. “Safety can never be the overall and ultimate aim because if we try and live safely by simply identifying others as our enemies then we live in an increasingly closed mentality, and that is not a good way to live,” he said.