Skip to main content

Pope Francis: Shutting out immigrants is not Christian

Pope Francis (AP Photo/File)
Pope Francis said on Thursday that it is not Christian to shut out immigrants, urging nations to welcome people whose lives had been “watered down” by poverty, injustice and exploitation.
Francis, whose defense of migrants and refugees has been a key theme of his nearly 5-year-old pontificate, spoke on his last day in Chile before he was due to leave for Peru to start the second and last leg of his Latin American tour.
“There is no Christian joy when doors are closed; there is no Christian joy when others are made to feel unwanted, when there is no room for them in our midst,” he said in the homily of Mass on a beach in this city in Chile’s far north.
“The cry of the poor is a kind of a prayer; it opens our hearts and teaches us to be attentive,” he said from an enormous white stage framed by dune-like desert mountains on one side and the hazy blue of the Pacific Ocean on the other.
The pope has stepped up his defense of immigrants in recent months as migration has become a hot political issue in many countries.
In the United States, lawmakers are still grappling with the fate of so-called dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children and now face deportation after decades of living there.
In Europe, the German far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party became a key force last year, and in Italy, the anti-immigrant Northern League is expected to make gains in national elections in March.
Francis urged his listeners to be attentive to “all situations of injustice and to new forms of exploitation” including by those who profit from immigrants’ problems, such as lack of documentation.
The trials and difficulties of immigrants trying to keep their families together had left many feeling like “their lives had been watered down,” he said as 50,000 people faced the stage and the ocean.
WAVE OF ARRIVALS
Chile has had much less immigration than other South American nations, but a stable economy and moderate politics since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990 have made it more attractive to those fleeing economic hardship elsewhere in Latin America.
A wave of recent arrivals from Haiti and Venezuela has increasingly stoked anti-immigrant sentiment in Chile.
The region around Iquique, which means “dreams,” in the local indigenous Aymara language, has the country’s highest percentage of migrants, according to official statistics.
People from neighboring Peru, Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia have been attracted to Chile’s northern desert region, home to the majority of mines and a booming service and construction industry in the world’s biggest copper exporter.
But many who arrive seeking their fortunes have instead found poverty and exclusion.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Over 1 lakh illegal immigrants arrested in US in 2017

On January 25, Trump issued an executive order to set forth the Administration’s immigration enforcement and removal priorities. (Representational Image) The US authorities have arrested 143,470 illegal immigrants this year, according to a latest report. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in its annual report that it has made 143,470 administrative arrests in fiscal year 2017, increasing 30 per cent Year-on-Year, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday. An administrative arrest is the arrest of an alien for a civil violation of the immigration laws, which is subsequently adjudicated by an immigration judge or through other administrative processes. Of the total arrests, 110,568 occurred after January 20, which is a 42 per cent increase over the same time period last year, according to the report. US President Donald Trump took the oath of office on January 20 this year. On January 25, Trump issued an executive order to set forth the Administration’s immigrat...
Post a Comment
Read more

Canada debates new harassment legislation amid #MeToo storm

We can afford to do more for people who need it by doing less for people who don’t: Trudeau’s message (Photo Source: Reuters) Canada’s parliament began debate on Monday on new legislation to tighten workplace harassment rules, including those governing politicians, as allegations of sexual misconduct mounted against lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum. The bill, introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in November, gained a new prominence after a federal cabinet minister and two provincial party leaders stepped down last week after being accused of inappropriate behavior. While the proposed law will govern all federal workplaces, including private businesses, the environment among political staffers in Ottawa was in focus as the #MeToo social media movement gained momentum in Canada. “It clearly is a crisis in this workplace,” Employment Minister Patty Hajdu told reporters outside the House of Commons. “We talk a lot about getting wom...
Post a Comment
Read more

Trump administration drops Obama-era easing of marijuana prosecutions

The US Justice Department on Thursday rescinded an Obama administration policy that had eased enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that legalized the drug, instead giving federal prosecutors wide latitude to pursue criminal charges. The action by Attorney General Jeff Sessions could have damaging consequences for the burgeoning marijuana industry in the six states including California and Colorado that have legalized the drug for recreational use, plus dozens of others that permit medicinal use. Justice Department officials declined to say whether they might take legal action against those states, saying further steps were “still under consideration.” Federal law still prohibits marijuana even as some states move to legalize it. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said President Donald Trump’s top priority was enforcing federal law “whether it’s marijuana or immigration.” The policy change, detailed by Sessions in a one-page memo to federal prosecutors nationwid...
Post a Comment
Read more