Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Guatemala City (Agenzia Fides) - “Immigration and Faith” is the title of the message that was written by Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini of San Marcos, President of the Pastoral Services for Human Mobility of the Guatemalan Bishops' Conference, for the National Day of Migrants, which will be celebrated in the country on September 6.
“No community can consider itself Christian if it does not welcome our brother and sister immigrants with arms wide open,” the text reads. Often, it occurs that “many Christians, Catholics, and non-Catholics ignore the suffering, difficulties, anxieties, dreams, illusions, and hopes of immigrants...” In light of this situation, there is a need to reaffirm “the preferential option for the poor,” as the Bishops at Aparecida said, as it is a reality “that should affect all our pastoral structures.” Where people are victims of an “unjust and marginalizing” society, men and women “suffering from a lack of opportunity,” Christians are called to offer their contribution by “genuinely living out their faith.”
Bishop Ramazzini says that “faith helps us to see the phenomenon of immigration as a unique opportunity to imitate the compassion and love of the Good Samaritan.” Thus, we should work to overcome “a vision that is merely one of offering aid, albeit necessary, in order to seek as a Church, as the People of God and Body of the Lord, the means and strategies for establishing migration policies that respect the dignity and protect the life of immigrants.”
“If we want to be believers who live out what they believe, we cannot ignore the present situation of immigrants that every day risk their lives for dangers they encounter along the way,” the text says.
The Bishop of San Marcos adds: “we should give thanks to God for the apostolic commitment of all those persons who have reached their destinations” and “have become evangelizers that share their experience of faith” in the communities that have welcomed them. Through their apostolic and missionary efforts, “they help present the Church as a resplendent spouse, stainless and flawless.”
In the second part of the Message, the members of the Bishops' Commission for Human Mobility mention some of the contents of the declaration from the meeting on “The World Economic Crisis and Migration,” which took place the first week of June in the city of Tecun Uman (see Fides 3/6/2009). Among these is the request made to authorities to reach a consensus “through dialogue” and “radical solutions to the phenomenon of forced immigration”; the invitation to hold an encounter “to discuss and establish an organic migratory policy”; the invitation to authorities to place “greater attention on groups of organized crime that are active on our borders and within our nations,” especially drug-traffickers and those who conduct trafficking in human persons. In the absence of organic migratory policies, “the impact of immigration on family stability is extremely serious,” especially if it is coupled with a widespread indifference towards immigrants, ignoring that they are “brothers of the same faith and members of the same family.”
The message concludes with a heartfelt invitation to all Christian communities in the dioceses and Vicariates of the nation to celebrate the Day of the Immigrant, “uniting themselves in a special manner to the family members of those who suffer from the distance from those they hold dear.” All Guatemalans are asked to “live the evangelical charity of the Good Samaritan” through acts of solidarity. (GT) (Agenzia Fides 31/8/2009)
