EUROPE/ITALY - The ability of reading in the growing numbers of immigration, "a new Exodus of people who seek peace, claiming rights, fleeing from hunger and thirst"

Rome (Agenzia Fides) - The Bishops of the IECM (Italian Episcopal Commission for Migration), at the end of their meeting on March 12, wanted to remember, after a year, the journey of hope that led, through the revolution that invested North Africa, over 62,000 people to land in Italy in 2011, 52,000 of whom first landed on the island of Lampedusa. "After a year - write the Bishops - the images of those numerous barges loaded with men, women and children, many dead bodies in the hold of a barge or dragged by the waves on the coast are still present in our minds. Just as we cannot forget the solidarity, the generosity of many volunteers, the work of many seafarers, the reception of Lampedusa and many Italian parishes and dioceses, together with moments of suffering and fear. "
The text highlights that Lampedusa was the "sign of contradiction" of an Italy and a Europe that, on one hand "have an extraordinary richness of culture, a deep awareness of rights, a rich Christian tradition" but on this occasion, risked "locking themselves, rejecting, rather than accompanying new and desperate stories of individuals and families. The contradictions of Lampedusa are sometimes contradictions of our Christian communities, uncertain in the reading of a phenomenon that increasingly grows and invests the everyday places of our lives: from South to North Italy, from East and West of Europe, from South to North. The ability of reading these numbers of immigration that not only increase a new statistic data, but a new Exodus of people who seek peace, claiming rights, fleeing from hunger and thirst, means to interpret history through the eyes of faith and build our community as houses, tents where everyone can be accommodated".
The text points out, finally the 25th anniversary of Migrants, in which the renewed statute has just been approved, emphasizing the importance of this organization to help the Church to read the perspective of faith and proclamation of the Gospel, the phenomenon of human mobility and, in it, that of the fragility of the minority: "The current migration history of our Country, the position of Italy in the middle of the Mediterranean, is still an important place of evangelization and human promotion." (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 13/3/2012)