ROME — Today every Christian is “called to reflect God’s gaze towards our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters,” Pope Francis declared Monday.
Immigration is a “very important challenge,” the pontiff told a group of pilgrims in the Vatican. “It highlights the urgent need to put fraternity before rejection and solidarity before indifference.”
The pope went on to say that we are called “to live and spread the culture of encounter, an equal encounter between migrants and the people of the country that welcomes them.”
This, he said, “is an enriching experience, as it reveals the beauty of diversity.”
It is also fruitful, he asserted, “because the faith, hope and tenacity of migrants can be an example and a spur for those who want to commit themselves to building a world of peace and well-being for all.”
To increase fraternity and social friendship, “we are all called to be creative, to think outside the box,” Francis proposed. “We are called to open new spaces, where art, music and being together become instruments of intercultural dynamics, where we can savor the richness of the encounter of diversity.”
The pope prayed that his hearers might experience “the joy of being with migrants, of being at their service, and of doing so with faith, animated by the Holy Spirit, in the conviction that in each of them we encounter the Lord Jesus.”
Pope Francis arrives at the ‘John XXIII Peace Lab’ center for migrants in Hal Far, Malta, Sunday, April 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
“And this helps you to have the style of generous gratuitousness, not to spare physical and economic resources to promote migrants in an integral way; and it also helps you to work in communion of purpose, as a family, united in diversity,” he concluded.
The pope has been carrying out a full course press in favor of immigration over the past days.
On Sunday, for example, Francis condemned Europe’s “scandalous” rejection of migrants, asserting that “the exclusion of migrants is criminal, it kills them right before our eyes.”
“And that’s how the Mediterranean has become the largest cemetery in the world,” he declared. “The exclusion of migrants is disgusting, sinful and criminal, by not opening doors to those in need.”
Instead of welcoming them, Europe sends them “to concentration camps, where they are exploited and sold like slaves,” he stated.
“Brothers and sisters, today let us call to mind these migrants, especially those who are dying,” he said. “And those who are able to come in, do we welcome them as brothers and sisters or do we exploit them?”
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