The massive deportation of undocumented migrants is incompatible with Catholic doctrine, Jesuit Cardinal Michael Czerny says. Source: NCR Online.
“Only one thing is necessary: to listen to what God is saying and to respond faithfully so as to journey as people of God called to build an ever wider ‘we,’ an ever-deeper fraternity,” Cardinal Czerny said. “Christians are called to remember that all goods and resources are universally destined.”
Cardinal Czerny, the head of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, spoke via video to more than 70 theologians, pastors and ministers from North, Central and South America as keynote speaker at the bilingual conference “Synodality in America: People on the Move, Dialogue, and New Contexts” held at the University of San Diego near the US-Mexico border in California.
“In the United States, direct aid and accompaniment with migrants is now in danger because programs have been terminated, budgets frozen or cancelled, staff dismissed,” Cardinal Czerny said during his address in Spanish on February 7.
“There is a real fear of persecution and prosecution,” he continued.
Cardinal Czerny emphasised that migration in the Americas is a “wounded reality” that Christians should not ignore.
“National security was ideologised and weaponised against the poor throughout the Americas,” Cardinal Czerny said. “For those of you who minister in the United States, I pray that your parishes and dioceses will be unafraid to walk with migrants.”
“[Migrants] are a theophany, a revelation of God’s active presence in history.”
Cardinal Czerny highlighted poor governance and corruption, drug trafficking and increased violence, along with human rights violations, as causes that force people to flee their home countries.
“The corridors of death that multiply across our hemisphere and the whole globe reflect political failures: the dearth of imagination and lack of coordination.”
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Cardinal Michael Czerny: Don’t be afraid to walk with migrants (By Luis Donaldo Gonzalez, NCR Online)
