Fr. Czerny (Dicastery for Integral Human Development), “Our Church increasingly learns to accompany migrants”

“Call to mind the life and teaching of Jesus, seeing in them his identification with asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants” is the invitation that Fr. Michael Czerny, under-secretary, co-responsible for the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, addressed this morning to the participants of the panel on a Christian Response to Migrants and Refugees, at the Pastoral Congress of the Dublin World Meeting of Families. “Having a place—noted Czerny, referring to the panel’s title “Nowhere to Lay His Head”—is normal for birds and foxes. Not having a place is abnormal. Yet, for us Christians, this abnormality cannot be just a fact or a bit of bad luck for someone.”

Rather, he warns, we are called to “welcome the stranger,” and “we” is “my family, our community, our neighborhood, our parish, our diocese, our Catholic organizations” because the families of vulnerable migrants “are not only needy and deserving of our mercy. They are also “us.” These families “can, in turn, help protect the vulnerable, promote the integral human development of others, and might be able to better integrate those who initially let them in.” Hence, a wish: “May our Church increasingly learn to accompany migrants and become a Church ever better able to accompany all families in a process of rapid transformation.”