The 97th World Day of Migrants and Refugees has as its theme: ‘One human family’. Its subject matter is inherently prophetic. We are well aware of the current tragic international scenario where wars, persecutions and all kinds of violence seem to prevail in our digital age.
Taking as his starting point the Vatican II’s declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions, Nostra Aetate, namely that “one is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth”, Pope Benedict XVI emphasised that humanity is a one large family.
“‘One human family’, one family of brothers and sisters in societies that are becoming ever more multi-ethnic and intercultural, where also people of various religions are urged to take part in dialogue, so that a serene and fruitful coexistence with respect for legitimate differences may be found”.
Despite its varied forms, human life is the common denominator that unites and gives humanity its singular dignity. Human life is the value that makes the human being a person, created in the very Trinitarian image of God, thus qualifying the human person’s essence as fundamentally communitarian. Seen from this perspective, as Pope Benedict XVI says in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, today’s phenomenon of globalisation requires that “humanity itself… become[s] increasingly interconnected. The truth of globalisation as a process, and its fundamental ethical criterion, is given by the unity of the human family and its development towards what is good” (§ 42). In other words, and as this year’s message powerfully reiterates, “all, therefore, belong to one family, migrants and the local populations that welcome them, and all have the same right to enjoy the goods of the earth whose destination is universal.”
Being a refugee is a right. In his message for this same day that was celebrated in 2001, Pope John Paul II highlighted that “[the universal common good] includes the whole family of peoples, beyond every nationalistic egoism. The right to emigrate must be considered in this context. The Church recognises this right in every human person, in its dual aspect of the possibility to leave one’s country and the possibility to enter another country to look for better conditions of life” (§ 3).
On the other hand, being a refugee is also a duty, in that the refugee is called to respect the laws and the way of life of the host country, even if this constitutes a constant challenge to both parties. “The challenge is to combine the welcome due to every human being, especially when in need, with a reckoning of what is necessary for both the local inhabitants and the new arrivals to live a dignified and peaceful life” (§ 13).
The interesting ramification of this year’s papal message is the relevance it gives to the role of “the foreign and international students who are also a growing reality within the great migration phenomenon”. For the Holy Father they “constitute cultural and economic ‘bridges’ between these countries and the host countries, and all this goes precisely in the direction of forming ‘one human family’”. It is pertinent that international students are financially and emotionally supported in order that they can easily integrate with the social and tertiary ambience that is receiving them. This must be so when bearing in mind that “at school and at university the culture of the new generations is formed: their capacity to see humanity as a family called to be united in diversity largely depends on these institutions”.
Education is, in fact, a powerful vehicle through which we can promote the eternal truth that, as human beings, we are one human family!
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap