Syrian refugee camp in the outskirts of Athens. Photo: Julie Ricard on Unsplash
National Refugee Week this year commences on World Refugee Day, Sunday, June 20, and runs through to Saturday, June 26. This Week is an opportunity for the world to celebrate refugees and people seeking asylum, while raising awareness and honouring people’s journeys to freedom. So many have taken the difficult journey to come to Australia. We thank them for their contribution in making Australia the rich diverse country it is today. This Week is also an important time to educate ourselves about the refugee experience so that together, we can change refugee policy for the better.
In his Message for the 107th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, which takes place later in the year on September 27th, Pope Francis turns to his Encyclical Fratelli Tutti to express once again his concerns and hopes during this time of the Covid 19 pandemic: “Once this health crisis passes, our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism and new forms of egotistic self-preservation. God willing, after all this, we will think no longer in terms of ‘them’ and ‘those’, but only ‘us’ (no. 35)”. For this reason, the Pope says he has devoted his Message to the theme, Towards An Ever Wider “We”, in order to “indicate a clear horizon for our common journey in this world.”
God created us in God’s image, in the image of God’s triune being, a communion in diversity. Being made in the image of our Triune God we are relational and made for communion with others. Jesus died and rose so “that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21). However, “our ‘we’ ”, says Pope Francis, “both in the wider world and within the Church, is crumbling and cracking due to myopic and aggressive forms of nationalism and radical individualism,” and, “the highest price is being paid by those who most easily become viewed as others: foreigners, migrants, the marginalized, those living on the existential peripheries.”
There are many reasons why people flee their homelands as refugees and asylum seekers. In today’s world, a very few rich people possess more than all the rest of humanity combined. As the present market economy puts profits before people, great inequalities and growing numbers of people living in poverty are the result – a situation that is unsustainable in the long run. Pope Francis argues that the economy is sick because of unequal economic growth and distribution. The Pope has called for an inclusive economy that would create more sustainable and inclusive societies and that aims at including all their members in growth, beginning with the excluded and the most vulnerable.
Today 34 million people are starving. Until the conditions in the countries of origin for those considering fleeing allow them to remain at home in safety and to support their families, the new Vatican Pastoral Orientations on Climate Displaced Peoples states, “we are obliged to respect the right of all individuals to find a place that meets their basic needs and those of their families, and where they can find personal fulfilment.”
Being members of the Catholic Church says Pope Francis, “entails a commitment to becoming ever more faithful to our being ‘catholic’.” “The Holy Spirit enables us to embrace everyone, to build communion in diversity, to unify differences without imposing a depersonalized uniformity. In encountering the diversity of foreigners, migrants and refugees, and in the intercultural dialogue that can emerge from this encounter, we have an opportunity to grow as Church and to enrich one another”. All the baptized, wherever they find themselves, are members of their local parish communities and the universal church.
Pope Francis constantly reminds us that as church we are to ‘go out’ - to go out to the peripheries of society and seek the abandoned, and without prejudice or fear, without proselytizing, to welcome and embrace. In so doing we witness to the Christian life.
Several years ago, Pope Francis called on Religious communities across the world to open their unused buildings to accommodate housing for refugees. In Melbourne, Australia, St Columbans Mission Society networks with the Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project in providing accommodation for refugees and people seeking asylum. We have two buildings that are no longer used as residences for our priests. For the past number years, we have been able to provide accommodation for single men in one building that has six bedrooms, and accommodation for a family in another. Once they are able to secure regular income they then have the means to move into their own rental properties. This is the aim for people with the permission and ability to seek work. Others are not in that position and continue to face homelessness if not assisted.
“The encounter with migrants and refugees of other denominations and religions,” says Pope Francis, “represents a fertile ground for the growth of open and enriching ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.” Furthermore, says Pope Francis, “today’s migration movements offer an opportunity for us to overcome our fears and let ourselves be enriched by the diversity of each person’s gifts. Then, if we so desire, we can transform borders into privileged places of encounter, where the miracle of an ever wider ‘we’ can come about”.
Fr Kevin O’Neill is a Peace, Ecology and Justice team member at the Columban Mission Center, Essendon.
Prayer:
Holy, beloved Father, your Son Jesus taught us that
there is great rejoicing in heaven whenever someone lost is found,
whenever someone excluded, rejected or discarded is gathered into our
"we”, which thus becomes ever wider.
We ask you to grant the followers of Jesus,
and all people of goodwill, the grace to do your will on earth.
Bless each act of welcome and outreach that draws those in exile
into the “we” of community and of the Church,
so that our earth may truly become what you yourself created it to be:
the common home of all our brothers and sisters. Amen.
(Pope Francis)
Related links
- Read more from the current Columban eBulletin
