During a special mass celebrating World Day of Migrants and Refugees, “Pope Francis urged believers to show more compassion towards refugees.
“Local communities are sometimes afraid that the newly arrived will disturb the established order, will ‘steal’ something they have long laboured to build up,” Francis intoned.
“The newly arrived… are afraid of confrontation, judgment, discrimination, failure.”
Fear of migrants, Francis continued, is a sin. “Having doubts and fears is not a sin. The sin is to allow these fears to determine our responses, to limit our choices, to compromise respect and generosity, to feed hostility and rejection.”
Pope Francis has been an unusually political figure. Orthodox Catholics accuse him of straying too far from the church’s teachings. Francis’ thoughts about migrants, however, are too naive rather than too daring.
Compassion isn’t enough. State officials need to be practical as well. If wealthy countries suddenly threw open their borders and abandoned their vetting principles, chaos would break out. In addition to security concerns, most governments lack the resources to support millions of migrants.
“Communities… have to open themselves without prejudices to [newcomers’] rich diversity, to understand the hopes and potential of the newly arrived as well as their fears and vulnerabilities,” Francis continued.
The entire world is grappling with the migrant crisis. Francis may be focused on the plight of the migrants, but a lot of other people are worried about the communities the migrants are streaming towards. Swedes are now afraid to walk alone at night, Germans are battling a surge in sexual assault cases. In the real world, hosting migrants comes at a cost.
(Source: Daily Mail)