ROME — Pope Francis urged a greater welcome for migrants Monday, appealing for a “a broader international awareness” regarding the phenomenon of migration.
We cannot forget “the millions of asylum seekers, refugees and displaced persons in other parts of the world, who desperately need to be welcomed, protected and loved,” the pontiff told participants in a meeting of the International Catholic Migration Commission.
“As a Church, we wish to serve everyone and to work diligently to build a future of peace. You have the opportunity to give a face to the Church’s charitable activity on their behalf!” the pope told them.
The Commission is “called to respond to global challenges and migratory emergencies with focused programs, always in communion with the local Churches,” Francis said, working especially for “a broader international awareness on issues involving migration.”
“In this way, it fosters respect for human rights and promotes human dignity in line with the Church’s social doctrine,” he said.
In particular, the pope stressed the challenges associated with “the vast displacement of persons caused by the conflict in Ukraine, which has seen the largest movement of refugees in Europe since the Second World War.”
File/Pope Francis poses for a photo with a group of refugees he invited to join him on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, June 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Fabio Frustaci)
In his 2022 message for the World Day of Social Communications, the pope urged journalists not to portray immigrants in a negative fashion but rather sympathetically as human-interest stories.
In order to “overcome prejudices about migrants and to melt the hardness of our hearts, we should try to listen to their stories,” Francis said. “Give each of them a name and a story.”
“Many good journalists already do this. And many others would like to do it, if only they could. Let us encourage them! Let us listen to these stories!” the pope said.
Rather than providing frightening statistics on migration or depicting migrants as invaders, journalists need to focus on the positive and the human, he declared.
“Everyone would then be free to support the migration policies they deem most appropriate for their own country,” the pope said. “But in any case, we would have before our eyes not numbers, not dangerous invaders, but the faces and stories, gazes, expectations and sufferings of real men and women to listen to.”
Since his election to the papacy in 2013, Pope Francis has made openness to migrants a hallmark of his pontificate and his first trip as pope was to the Italian island of Lampedusa to meet with migrants there.
“Migrants are not a danger; they are in danger,” the pope told schoolchildren in 2016. He then had the group repeat out loud several times together with him: “They are not a danger, they are in danger.”
The following year, Francis made one of his more provocative statements regarding immigration, insisting that the rights of migrants must prevail over national security interests.
While calling for a streamlined process of granting visas to migrants, Francis said the principle of ensuring each person’s dignity “obliges us to always prioritize personal safety over national security.”