IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Christ calls believers to welcome
migrants and refugees “with arms wide open, ready to give a sincere,
affectionate, enveloping embrace,” Pope Francis said, launching the
“Share the Journey” campaign of Catholic charities around the world.
Christians’ embrace of people fleeing war or poverty should
be “a bit like the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square, which represents the
mother church who embraces all in sharing a common journey,” the pope said
at the end of his weekly general audience Sept. 27.
With hundreds of refugees and migrants present in St.
Peter’s Square, Pope Francis said the Catholic charities’ staff and volunteers
who assist them are “a sign of a church that seeks to be open, inclusive
and welcoming.”
“Share the Journey” is a two-year campaign
sponsored by Caritas Internationalis, the global network of national Catholic
charities — including the U.S. Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities
USA — to promote encounters between people on the move and people living in
the countries they are leaving, passing through or arriving in.
Philippine
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila, president of Caritas
Internationalis, told Catholic News Service, “‘Share the Journey’ is not
just a title or a label for a program — it is that, but more than that, it is
a lifestyle,” an affirmation that everyone wants and needs someone to
share his or her journey through life.
“There are specific moments in the life of a person, a
family or the whole human family when we need to be reminded of this
fundamental truth that we have been given each other so that we would have
someone to share our journeys with,” he said, the day before the campaign
launched.
“A small gesture like extending one’s arm to somebody
else — it means a lot,” he said. “I reach out and if a person feels
alone and isolated, my reaching out is a gesture of solidarity. If I reach out
and that person is wounded, it could be a sign of healing. If I reach out and
the person is lost, it could mean an offer of guidance. If I reach out and
person feels like nobody cares, then it will be a sign of welcome.”
In his ministry in the Philippines and traveling around the
world for Caritas, Cardinal Tagle said he has come to realize that “we
don’t need to do great, extraordinary, extravagant things to make a difference
in the lives of people.”
Rather, he said, “small gestures, ordinary gestures,
when done with sincerity, with the light of human understanding, with the fire
of love can do extraordinary things.”
The cardinal said it is important for himself and for all
Christians to look not only at the gestures of care and love they extend to others, but to
recognize how “I have been assured and encouraged by little gestures that
people have extended to me with sincerity and love.”
Those gestures, he said, “wow, they make my day, they
make my journeys more pleasant and bearable.”
One key point of the “Share the Journey” campaign,
Cardinal Tagle said, is to help Catholics and others take positive steps to get
to know the truth about the current refugee crisis and to actually meet a
migrant or refugee in person.
“Fear comes first from the unknown,” he said.
“Many people who are against migration or receiving migrants have not even
met a real migrant or a real refugee, have not even touched the hand of someone
forced to flee a war, have not even smelled the misery of these people. So we
wonder, ‘What are you afraid of? Where is this fear coming from?'”
Cardinal Tagle said his hope is that when Catholics meet a
migrant or refugee, they can say, “‘She’s a sister.’ ‘She could be my
mother.’ ‘She could be my neighbor.'”
Lasting impressions can come from the experience of meeting,
talking to and sharing even a moment of the journey with a migrant or refugee,
the cardinal said.
For him, the refugee who stays in his mind, heart and
prayers is “a teenager, a young boy who we encountered in the refugee camp
in Idomeni, in Greece,”
in late 2015. He was
from Syria and he was alone after his parents urged him to escape the country.
“You know, whenever I think of this boy, I feel
anxious, but I pray for him,” the cardinal said. “And you just hope
there are men and women of good will who will see in him a son, a brother, a
neighbor and will share his journey.”
Sister
Norma Pimentel, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus and executive
director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, joined
Cardinal Tagle for the audience with Pope Francis.
“‘Share the Journey’ is the opportunity for all of us
as church, as the people of God, to walk with and be part of that journey that
the immigrants are going through,” she told CNS. It is an opportunity to
tell migrants and refugees they are not alone. “We are saying, ‘We are
with you and we want you to know that we will always be with you and care for
you.'”
The experience of sharing the journey of migrants and
refugees can build up both the church and the local community, she said,
speaking especially from the experience of running a center for migrants and
refugees at Sacred Heart
parish in McAllen, Texas, on the border with Mexico.
Families who “had gone through so much pain and
suffering through all their journey” suddenly come to a place where they
are welcomed and the expressions on their faces change, she said. The encounter
enables them to “experience the presence of God among us just by, at that
moment in their journey, finding somebody who cares.”
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