ROME — Pope Francis has placed “atmospheric phenomena” among the most evident causes of forced international migration.
In his Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, the pontiff said that migrants “flee because of poverty, fear or desperation,” and eliminating these causes means making “every effort to halt the arms race, economic colonialism, the plundering of other people’s resources and the devastation of our common home.”
“Conflicts, natural disasters, or more simply the impossibility of living a dignified and prosperous life in one’s native land is forcing millions of persons to leave,” he said, and “among the most visible causes of forced migrations today” are persecutions, wars, atmospheric phenomena, and dire poverty.
Christians are called “to see in the migrant not simply a brother or sister in difficulty, but Christ himself, who knocks at our door,” Francis said in the text released by the Vatican Thursday.
This means “accompanying and managing waves of migration as best we can, constructing bridges and not walls, expanding channels for a safe and regular migration,” he added.
In the case of migration, “the important thing is that there always be a community ready to welcome, protect, promote and integrate everyone, without distinctions and without excluding anyone,” he said.
Thursday’s message was not the first time that Pope Francis expressed his belief that climate change is fueling international migration, a thesis that unites two of the hallmark topics of this pontificate, namely global warming and immigration.
In 2018, the pope denounced an “ecological crisis” sweeping the world, producing a “growing exodus of climate migrants and environmental refugees.”
The pope’s words echoed predictions by the World Bank that more than 143 million people will be forced to migrate by 2050 thanks to climate change.
In its 2018 report, titled “Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration,” the World Bank predicted that “droughts, failing crops, rising sea levels, and storm surges” will drive tens of millions to uproot from their homes.
Pope Francis has also denounced those who underscore “the risks posed to national security” by mass migration, accusing them of demagoguery and promoting xenophobia.
Such “rhetoric” sows “violence, racial discrimination and xenophobia, which are matters of great concern for all those concerned for the safety of every human being,” he declared.
People migrate principally because they desire a better life, the pope said, and there has been “a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation.”