Pray with the Pope: A Church that Welcomes Everyone

Every month Fr Chris Chatteris SJ reflects on Pope Francis’ prayer intention

Intention: We pray for the Church; ever faithful to and courageous in preaching the Gospel, may the Church be a community of solidarity, fraternity and welcome, always living in an atmosphere of synodality.

One of the classic ways in which the Catholic Church grows is through immigration. Anyone who has attended Mass in the urban areas of South Africa will have noticed this — the numbers are being swelled by immigrants from our neighbouring countries.

This has happened many times before in the Church. The European immigration to the United States from countries such as Ireland, Italy and Germany greatly increased the numbers of Catholics in that country. The process continues today with the migration of Catholics from South and Central America, so that it is now essential for US Catholic seminarians to know Spanish.

There is a particular and poignant relevance in the pope’s October intention for South Africa.

Unfortunately, this “beloved country” has not always shown its love towards immigrants. Solidarity and fraternity towards newcomers from war-torn or economically failed states has been sorely lacking.

The state itself has made it very difficult for potential immigrants to come here. The bureaucratic red tape that one has to deal with, even to get a visitor’s or study visa, appears ro be designed for one purpose only — to discourage people from even trying!

And then, if immigrants do manage to find entry to the country, they face the constant background threat of xenophobic violence, whipped up by the usual emotive accusations about outsiders being criminals and coming to “steal” local jobs. As if we don’t have any of our own criminals! As for the stealing of jobs — even in our local government, there have been cases of politicians being murdered because of competition for posts..

More urgent than ever

Which is why a courageous preaching of the Gospel, Christian solidarity and hospitality towards strangers is more urgent than ever within the Church. It is not a popular message here, or anywhere else for that matter, but studies appear to show that immigration is in fact good for the economy of the receiving country, because immigration creates rather than destroys opportunities for employment.

So where the sin of xenophobia abounds, the grace of fraternity must abound more and Christians are called to be a channel of this grace.

That grace can flow through the parish community. The smallest acts of kindness or gestures of acceptance will mean much to people who have experienced hostility, rejection and violence. Those of us who have the security of citizenship must make a leap of imagination to step into the shoes of those who lack that security. To do this is to believe in the welcoming catholicity of the Catholic Church.

This bounces us out of our comfort zones, but that is the point of synodality. When we listen intently to the other and take them seriously, we ourselves find that we change. And, of course, newcomers to a parish will change the parish, even without trying to. The challenge to the “old faithful” is to grasp that such change will be for the best because infusing new blood into the Body of Christ renews and revivifies it.

This practical synodality requires that the leadership encourages and facilitates it and the “followership” supports and participates in it. We pray that the Holy Spirit will grant the grace of generosity of heart to us all.