Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, recalled that “the Church goes forward together with humanity” (No. 40); therefore “the joys and the hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts” (ibid., 1). The Servant of God Paul VI echoed these words when he called the Church an “expert in humanity” (Populorum Progressio, 13), as did Blessed John Paul II when he stated that the human person is “the primary route that the Church must travel in fulfilling her mission… the way traced out by Christ himself” (Centesimus Annus, 53). In the footsteps of my predecessors, I sought to emphasize in my Encyclical Caritas in Veritate that “the whole Church, in all her being and acting – when she proclaims, when she celebrates, when she performs works of charity – is engaged in promoting integral human development” (No. 11). I was thinking also of the millions of men and women who, for various reasons, have known the experience of migration. Migration is in fact “a striking phenomenon because of the sheer numbers of people involved, the social, economic, political, cultural and religious problems it raises, and the dramatic challenges it poses to nations and the international community” (ibid., 62), for “every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance” (ibid.). Continue reading
