MUNDELEIN (CNS): Michael Cardinal Czerny, undersecretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, urged a group of bishops gathered at Mundelein Seminary, Illinois, the United States (US), to think of migrants, whether they arrive for the short or long term, as “parishioners” and organise pastoral plans to tend to them.
Speaking via Zoom on June 2, Cardinal Czerny told an emergency meeting of bishops from the US, Central America and Mexico, as well as heads of major US Catholic organisations that help migrants, “I hope that, after this meeting, you can call your priests together and consider the pastoral task incumbent on us all: to welcome, to protect, to promote and to integrate.”
Hel said, “Depending on where the diocese is, the parishes might encounter one or more (points) of departure, transit, arrival, short- or long-term settlement, and even return of migrants. And in each case, the migrants are ‘our’ parishioners, whether briefly or long-term, whether practicing Catholics or of other faiths or no religion at all.”
Cardinal Czerny, in particular, praised the “effective ministry” of women religious and spoke of “the recent deployment of religious sisters from all across the United States to care for unaccompanied youth and children arriving at the border.”
Migration, is part of the salvation history of Christians: Abraham, “a wandering Aramean,” took his family from Ur “to a place of greater promise—a promised land,” and Jesus, as an infant, “practically started life as a refugee,” the cardinal pointed out, stressing that no matter how Christians encounter different forms of migration, it is essential to respond to people on the move as brothers and sisters.
