EUROPE/SPAIN - “Peace demands a positive attitude which respects the identity of immigrants while safeguarding the cultural heritage of the hosting people”. Spanish Bishops issue letter for National Migration Day: “Similar or different but in peace”

Thursday, 16 September 2004

Madrid (Fides Service) - In a pastoral Letter to mark the National Migration Day 26 September, with the title “Similar or different in peace”, the Catholic Bishops of Spain say “our attitude towards people who are different will either cause differences degenerate into conflict or it can remove prejudice and increase understanding in view of brotherhood and peace for all”. In effect “where there is no encounter and interaction between different cultures there is tension and this explodes periodically in conflict”. Consequently “to obtain peaceful co-existence there must be on both sides since commitment to promoting integration at the social level and interaction at the cultural level”.
In the Letter the Bishops say that education to dialogue, intercultural, interreligious and ecumenical, is indispensable: “besides helping to heal old grievances and remove obstacles, interreligious dialogue is a way of offering humanity of the third Christian millennium those shared spiritual values which must be rediscovered in view of building a society worthy of mankind”.
“Peace demands a positive attitude which respects the identity of immigrants while safeguarding the cultural heritage of the hosting people”.
In the letter the Bishops remind the local Churches in Spain that, besides making other people welcome and the obligation to defend the dignity of the migrants, they must also promote sound education in co-existence to enable Christians to lives as brothers with those who are different. They also urge parishes to be “places of welcome, encounter, healing and channels of energy”. (R.Z.) (Agenzia Fides 16/9/2004; Righe 23, Parole 306)


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