austraLasia #2027

The Rector Major speaks out on the rights of migrants in Europe... with obvious applications elsewhere

ROME: 14th January 2008 -- The Rector Major was recently interviewed by FIDES News Agency (Rome) on the question of the huge movements of people into Europe (as many as 50 million in recent years) which, amongst other factors, makes Europe 'mission territory'.  But the Rector Major's comments have application also for similar movement of peoples in other regions.
    Reflecting on the European situation, the Rector Major identifies several models: "In some countries the migrants have to integrate fully - conform to the legislation of the country, the culture and customs where they have come to live and work, renouncing their cultural identity with everything that implies. This seems to be the French model to me. In others migrants are absolutely necessary as workers and eventually gain the right to vote. Here there is a multicultural view and policy, with itsx social and political implications. This is the Spanish model and from an even more multicultural perspective still - Holland.  But generally speaking I would say there is no full acceptance of the migrant in his or her completeness of personality, culture, difference. This is due to fear of losing national identity faced with invasion from a foreign culture. What we need in my view is a true inter-culturalism which takes account of the variety of peoples and cultures which is increasingly the makeup of European nations, and which, consequently, brings about a new European reality. My image for it is the mosaic, made up of bits of so many different colours, size, shape but making a single image".
    Further on in the interview he expresses his doubts about the term 'integration'. He said he prefers to speak of "full respect for and recognition of the value of each person's dignity, recognising the basic rights of each person in as much as he or she is a human being: right to life, physical integrity, freedom of thought, religion, expression, association, being involved politically; economic, social and cultural rights upheld by the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1948: the right to education, work, a home, health". He points out that the Church's teaching is that safeguarding human rights depends on an anthropology which embraces all the dimensions which make up the human person - "I think we have to speak of the urgency of a true conversion, as much for those who are arriving as for those who are receiving them, the migrant as much as the European".
    The entire interview is too long and too complicated to sum up in a brief news item, but it is worth drawing readers' attention to it (it can be found on the FIDES site only in Italian at the moment - hopefully in English eventually). Since the release of the 2008 Strenna, this interview and the forthcoming (later this week) Days of Spirituality of the Salesian Family, have begun to highlight situations of human rights especially as they affect the young. In fact, the Rector Major's final words in the interview referred to are: "I am convinced that a people without religion becomes a people without hope (Cf. Spe Salvi). And European culture at the moment offers everything except reasons for living. It is the new generations, naturally, which are exposed to this reality".
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Title: australasia 2027
Subject and key words: SDB General Migration Human rights
Date (year): 2008
ID: 2000-2099|2027