World Refugee Day: an opportunity to grow together
(Vatican Radio) At a time in history in which an
unprecedented 65,5 million people around the world have been forced from home,
we are witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record.
Among them are nearly 22,5 million refugees, over half of
which are under the age of 18.
World Refugee Day, held each year on June 20th,
commemorates the strength, courage and perseverance of millions of men, women
and children who are on the move, in search of protection and opportunity.
Pope Francis has done so again and again, both
in words and in action, as he has appealed to governments and policy-makers to
heed the Christian message of welcome as well as dedicating many personal
moments of encounter and prayer to refugees and forced migrants in different
situations.
Marking the occasion is also the Jesuit Refugee
Service with its message to accompany, serve and advocate on behalf of
refugees and other forcibly displaced persons. In an effort to make its message
even stronger and more effective, this year it has done so joining forces with
other faith-based organizations and released an ecumenical statement entitled “Refugees: an
opportunity to grow together.”
Jesuit Father Aloysius Mowe, International
Director of Advocacy and Communications for JRS told Linda Bordoni that
as Christians, it is not enough to profess to love Christ because faith is
authentic only if it is expressed in loving action and solidarity:
World Refugee Day is an occasion in which to show leaders
and policy-makers that men and women of goodwill stand in solidarity with
refugees. Father Aloysius Mowe SJ describes the current populist trends we are
seeing across the world and that lead to the closure of borders, the building
of walls and the tendency to turn away ‘strangers’ as a product of fear and
anxiety, and says that as Christians we have a responsibility to spread a
culture of solidarity and welcome.
“Fear is a very natural phenomenon: we fear things that can
harm us” he says.
Fear, Fr. Aloysius continues, generates an anxiety that can
stem from the unknown. And he points out that migration issues - which are
certainly not pertinent only to Europe but are a reality in Asia-Pacific, in
Africa and the Middle East - often give way to discussions and prejudice
about numbers and a possible clash of cultures which are contrary to the
message we (the JRS) want to express.
“The New Testament keeps on saying to us over and over: ‘do
not be afraid’. And as Christians we need to take that seriously and reflect on
it” he says.
Fr. Aloysius recalls numerous episodes in the Gospels that
highlight the centrality of this message and says that “at the heart of the
Gospel is proclaimed a God that says we should not be afraid, we should not let
fear control our actions, we should not let fear control our relationships.”
“If we take that message to heart I think we can really
begin to look at the people who come to our borders, the people who arrive on
our shores asking for solidarity and assistance, and instead of fear taking
control of our actions and reactions, we might actually look at them and ask
ourselves: ‘how can I be a sister or a brother to them, without being fearful
of the demands made on me? That’s the crux of the issue – it’s about fearing
that what we have is going to be taken away, as if what we have is an
entitlement” he says.
He recalls that Pope Francis himself has often recalled his
own migrant heritage as he comes from a family that migrated from Italy to
Argentina. He has also commented on the fact – Father Aloysius says - that his
family too could have become one of those “who never succeeded.”
By recalling this fact, he notes, the Pope is in fact
acknowledging that his fortunes, by and large, depended on the generosity and
on the welcome given by others.
“What if each one of us could say to ourselves ‘what if I
were in that situation? What would I want for myself and for my loved ones?’”
he says.
Regarding the joint ecumenical statement ‘Refugees: An
opportunity to grow together’ released by JRS with other Christians
organizations, Fr. Aloysius says its underlying message is that of solidarity.
Noting that Pope Francis has become the acknowledged world
leader on issues of migration and refugees, he recalls a recent talk in which
Francis said “when we talk about migration we have to start using verbs of
action: welcome, protect, promote and integrate – verbs that require a
subject”.
“So, we have to say ‘we welcome’, ‘I protect’. ‘I promote’,
we integrate’ – we have to take hold of this” he says.
And this is imperative, he continues, because every one of
us has an existence that is tied to the existence of someone else: no man
is an island, there is no such thing as ‘a self-made-man’ because every
accomplishment we may achieve everything we do or have, is dependent on what
someone else has done before us. This, he says, is part of the fundamental
solidarity of being human, which is even stronger for us Christians.
“Because Jesus is present, God is present in every single
human person – you cannot go to church on Sunday and say that you worship a man
who was homeless and died on the cross, and come out of church and ignore a
homeless man sitting in the street. Jesus would say to us: we are the same man”
he says.
So for World Refugee Day, says Father Aloysius, the message
JRS wants to emphasize is that we are all connected to each other and our faith
implies a fundamental solidarity in being human.
“If we call ourselves Christians it is not an optional
extra, it is at the very heart of who we are as Christians” he says.
He says that a day such as World Refugee Day is significant
in helping us look beyond the headlines we see in the news every day because
“beyond the headlines there is the reality of real people” – not just numbers –
real people who “at this very moment are in cities, in border situations, in
camps where they have been perhaps for many years – and that they are people
who are not different from you or from me”.
Father Aloysius reflects on the sheer numbers released by
organizations such as the UN and that speak of over 21million refugees in 2015
of whom at least half of them are children and says that the statistics are
such that they are almost too massive to take in.
He emphasizes the fact that over half of those numbers refer
to minors, many of them unaccompanied: “if you are a parent, or a sibling, or
if you are a grandparent and you look at the children around you think of them
as being homeless, at risk, hungry, without access to education, maybe you can
begin to go beyond the headlines”.
“World Refugee Day is saying take a pause: let’s go beyond
the headlines, and realise the enormity of what is going on and the fact
that the world can actually do something about this” he says.
“This is not an intractable problem, Father Aloysius
concludes, this is really an opportunity for us to share what we have and for
us to be more strategic in terms of how we welcome those who are displaced.”
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