Migrants and their pastoral care throughout the Pacific and Oceania was a central discussion point last week. In Wellington that is, during the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conference of Oceania (FCBCO) meeting. Catholic Archbishop of Wellington Paul Martin and the Wellington Archdiocese hosted the three-day meeting. In recent decades migration has become the key to Read more
Many asylum seekers in Aotearoa New Zealand are living on $40 a week from a charity, while they wait for decisions on their immigration status. Some are even resorting to sleeping in bus stops. The Asylum Seekers Support Trust (ASST), a charity relying on donations, provides assistance to approximately 400 asylum seekers across the country. Read more
A Benedictine abbess who granted refuge to female asylum-seekers faces trial for refusing to pay a fine. The trial could become a landmark case for deciding if granting church asylum amounts to the offense of “aiding and abetting illegal residents,” as interpreted by German state prosecutors. Mother Mechthild Thurmer granted refuge to female asylum-seekers in Read more
Former Irish president Mary McAleese had straight words to say at a conference in Trinity College Dublin on Saturday afternoon. Under the title “The Women The Vatican Couldn’t Silence,” she spoke of asylum seekers, the role of women in the church and cowardly bishops. Beginning with the issue of asylum seekers, but without specifically referring Read more
Last month I joined with Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) to speak at a series of public forums around the country to discuss the future for asylum seekers who remain in limbo in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. So far I have spoken in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart and Launceston, Adelaide, Perth and Benalla in Read more
Under Dutch law, police officers are not permitted to enter a church while a religious service is taking place. So, for more than a month, hundreds of pastors and volunteers from across the Netherlands conducted a non-stop 800-hour church service in support of an Armenian family whose asylum claim has been rejected. Continue reading
World Vision is calling on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to offer to immediately resettle all 119 children and their families who are detained in Nauru. Plea to save families on Nauru: ‘This is an emergency for those children’ Continue reading
Catholic groups have reacted strongly against new law enforcement measures that will prevent asylum seekers fleeing domestic or gang violence applying for protection in the United States. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says US asylum laws cannot be used to remedy “all misfortune.” This is even in cases where a person may be threatened with Read more
A Honduran father separated from his wife and child suffered a breakdown at a Texas jail and killed himself in a padded cell last month, according to Border Patrol agents and an incident report filed by sheriff’s deputies. The death of Marco Antonio Muñoz has not been publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security, Read more
This year on the Mexico-United State border, immigrants coming into the United States, even those applying for asylum at ports of entry, have been having their children taken from them. According to data prepared by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), from October 2017 to April 2018 more than 700 children were taken from adults Read more