A meeting of the Migration and Refugee Section of the Commission for Social Pastoral Care of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE), was held in Szombathely, Hungary, from November 12 to 14. “Free to choose whether to migrate or stay” was the theme of the meeting, which, echoing that of this year’s World Migrant and Refugee Day, offered an in-depth reflection on the meaning and possibilities of the freedom to decide whether to begin a migration journey or to stay in one’s own land.
The meeting was attended by national migration directors at different bishops’ conferences in Europe, presenting their reports and commitments at the local level. For Italy, the director general of the Migrantes Foundation, Msgr. Pierpaolo Felicolo, participated.
Also present were Fr. Fabio Baggio, Undersecretary of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development (Vatican), who presented the many study and concrete intervention initiatives promoted by the Apostolic See, and Msgr. Robert Vitillo, Secretary General of the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC).
Fr. Aldo Skoda, director of SIMI and professor of theology at the Pontifical Urbanian University in Rome, also spoke at the meeting. Fr. Skoda presented the main lines of reflection on the topic starting with a consideration of the demographic aspect of migration, which according to recent data involves mainly young people. After reiterating the essential and necessary elements for a correct pastoral approach, Fr. Skoda took stock of the consequences of misinformation and the risk posed by the political and ideological use of migration. He continued his speech by recalling some of the devastating consequences of illegal channels of migration and emphasized the role played by organized crime.
Fr. Skoda then reflected on how the social and anthropological stigma of migration represents a wound of our time, which often leads to forgetting that each person who migrates has a history, an originality, a personality of his or her own.
To the invitation to move from ideology to theology in addressing the challenges of migration, Fr. Skoda added the need for greater efforts to rediscover the relational and qualitative nature of the encounter with people, whether migrants or refugees, in order to overcome fears and make fraternity prevail in order to build strong and welcoming communities.