Pray with the Pope: Welcome those who seek a new life

by Chris Chatteris SJ · June 7, 2024

Intention: Let us pray that migrants fleeing from war or hunger, forced to undertake journeys fraught with danger and violence, may find welcome and new living opportunities in their host countries.

One of the reasons why we must hope and pray for peace in a world that seems to be stumbling towards a Third World War is that such a conflict would produce millions more refugees and migrants. Wars always do.

Indeed, in some cases, refugee flows are even weaponised in order to destabilise the countries towards which they are directed. The Russian regime recently dumped refugees from the Middle East at the border of Finland for precisely this purpose. In these cases refugees and migrants are not just byproducts of war — they are part of the war. Such are the moral depths to which some regimes and their leaders can sink.

It would be wonderful if we were able to envisage a new international order in which peace reigned and it was unnecessary for people to flee for their lives from brutal war-machines.

It would be wonderful to envisage a world in which economic and social collapses, such as are occurring today in Haiti or Zimbabwe, did not send millions off in search of a land of opportunity which is both relatively secure and predictable, where they can bring up their kids.

Organisations serving refugees and migrants, in this country and elsewhere, will occasionally celebrate the fact that a family or individual has been able to relocate to the highly developed world of Europe, North America or Australasia.

One naturally feels happy for them, but there is a bitter-sweetness about such triumphs. For one thing, they will be perhaps forever separated from their homelands and extended families, and for another, for every family which makes it to safety, there are millions who continue to live under the political and economic yokes which the lucky ones managed to escape.

Demonising for votes

Furthermore, the hoped and prayed-for welcome is not always forthcoming. We notice how immigration is not a vote-catcher. On the contrary, everywhere from the USA to SA, immigrant demonisation is a surefire vote-catcher. How hard it must be to know that you are a pawn in the politics of your host country and that there are politicians who are willing to put your life in danger as a way of acquiring political power!

There’s clearly a challenge to the Church here. If governments cannot be generous and truthful enough to acknowledge the contribution that immigrants make to their adopted societies, in terms of boosting faltering demographics and renewing the democracy which the citizens often take for granted, at least the Church can.

It is not difficult for Catholics to experience this “in the flesh”. Visit any of our urban parishes in any developed country — including our own relatively developed one — and you will find that the new blood, like the glorious new wine the Lord extols in the Gospel, is the immigrant families filling formerly empty pews.

The Lord enjoins us to welcome and embrace those for whom we pray in this intention.