Accepting refugees ‘helps to build peace’

In his message for the celebration of the 2018 World Day of Peace released on Friday last week, Pope Francis invites “people of good will” to embrace those fleeing war, hunger and persecution, write Jonathan Luxmoore and Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

The message entitled “Migrants and refugees: men and women in search of peace” poses the question: “Why so many migrants and refugees?” Francis answers this by considering the many conflicts forcing people to leave their homelands, but notes also the desire for a better life. Recognising that some consider the growth in migration as a threat, he says: “I ask you to view it with confidence, as an opportunity to build peace.”

Meanwhile, the German ambassador to the Holy See, Annette Schavan, told domradio.de that she did not think Francis’ continued insistence that helping refugees and migrants must remain a foremost Christian duty was asking too much of the Western world. The Pope “is under no illusions and no fantasist but he reminds us that the difficulties we face over integration cannot be used as an excuse to evade our responsibility”, Ms Schavan said.

However, Hungary’s Catholic Primate has defended his Church’s much-criticised failure to speak up on behalf of refugees, citing the country’s relative poverty. “Many in the West are unaware of how Hungarians are living today – average salaries are currently only a fourth of Germany’s,” said Cardinal Peter Erdo, interviewed by Vatican Radio’s Hungarian service as his Bishops’ Conference paid an ad limina visit to Rome, which included a two-hour meeting with the Pope. The Catholic Magyar Kurir news agency in its coverage of the five-day ad limina made no mention of the issue of refugees and asylum-seekers.

The treatment of migrants and refugees was also a central theme in the message from Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the US Bishops’ Conference, to mark Thanksgiving. He said that at their plenary last month the bishops “expressed a shared and ever-greater alarm [over] the deportation of young hard-working people [and] the anxiety and uncertainty of those with Temporary Protected Status from countries like Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras”.