ASIA/TAIWAN - Asia-Pacific Congress: "As a Church, we cannot remain silent witnesses of the conditions of migrants and their families"

Friday, 10 October 2014

Tai Pei (Agenzia Fides) - "Migration and Family in the Work of Mission Towards a Better World" was the theme of the Congress held in Tai Pei, which in recent days gathered eighty participants, including Bishops, priests, religious men and women, lay people from 19 countries of Asia and the Pacific (including Taiwan, Vietnam, Israel, India, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines). According to information sent to Fides Agency, the participants were invited to reflect "on its project of evangelization, to overcome preconceptions and prejudices in order to help immigrants to get closer to faith".
His Exc. Mgr. Bosco Lin Ji Nan, Bishop of the Diocese of Tai Nan and President of the Commission for Migrants of the Regional Episcopal Conference of Taiwan, presided over the work, remembering the Day of Immigrants, which the Church of Taiwan celebrates annually on the last Sunday of September. "Asia has more than 400,000 migrant workers and new immigrants - said the Bishop - who are helping the economy of Taiwan, but it has its own policies and traditional practices in the field of migration that sometimes despise and degrade human dignity in exchange for profit".
During the proceedings of the Congress various issues related to immigration were presented and discussed: the promotion of the mission, crisis of the family, migration in the Asia-Pacific region. ... At the end of the congress the participants signed a Pastoral Statement in which among other things they stated: "As a Church, we cannot remain silent and dumb witnesses of the conditions of migrants and their families and we are determined to make it the object of our mission and our action plan to work for a better world for them, through the promotion of human dignity regarding all migrants". (NZ) (Agenzia Fides 10/10/2014)


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