Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Bolzano (Agenzia Fides) - "We are living in a time when old and new conflicts uproot thousands of people from their homes and their land and force them to seek security elsewhere", said Father Leonir Chiarello (Superior General of the Scalabrinians), Sister Neusa de Fatima Mariano (general superior of the Scalabrinians) and Regina Widmann (general manager of the Scalabrinian Seculars) gathered for the meeting of the general directions of the three Institutes that make up the Scalabrinian Family. According to the note sent to Fides, the objective of the meeting, which was held in Villabassa (Bolzano), was to focus attention on the most pressing needs in the migration sector.
"We are living a time in which the exasperated search for one's own comfort exacerbates the inequalities among people and between nations – they continue - and forces many to look for
opportunities in another country, where access to those opportunities is often denied; a time in which to have hope one must buy it illegally and end up buying the probability of failure or death; a time in which rhetoric against migrants prevails and is utilized as an easy tool to obtain consensus while giving in return uncertain and short-term solutions. These are not abstract considerations. Just think of the many borders where so many tragedies are taking place every day".
These are three guidelines launched by the Scalabrinian Family. Narrating through facts and witnessing because there is a lot of "repetitiveness in stigmatizing migrants as a threat to national well-being, to the security of citizens, to the cultural heritage of a society". Therefore narrating migrants, because "the migrants especially are silent, because nobody wants to hear their voice. It is our duty to
create opportunities for migrants to speak and for someone to listen, for us to listen". Finally, "narrating to God", because "precisely before God the migrants will not accompany us, but we must
create opportunities to narrate together our stories that intertwine to become the history of salvation". (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 7/9/2019)
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