The compassion of the crowd can make you feel heartless for reserving comment until a reasonable question has been answered. When we began getting pictures of Syrians walking into Europe last week and our media became awash with the story, my heart was stuck on one question: why is this happening now? The Syrian civil Read more
Hitler salutes and the chanting of Nazi slogans at migrants from the Middle East has pained German Cardinal Reinhard Marx. Marx, the President of the German Bishops’ conference said he felt physically pained seeing protesters making the gestures and shouting the chants. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Marx labelled the emergence of a new xenophobia in Read more
As dawn breaks, ghost-like figures with sunken heads laden with babies, bundles of food and clothing can be seen trudging slowly along the autobahn. Alongside the usual tips on tailbacks and delays, traffic bulletins on the local radio alert drivers to “pedestrians who have been spotted on the A3 between the Austrian border and south Read more
Support for growing New Zealand’s refugee quota has been swelling over the last six months. Every week a new commentator sees the global refugee crisis and our tiny intake and agrees that New Zealanders must do our bit. One of the very few people to publicly oppose an increase in New Zealand’s refugee quota is Read more
Judging from the headlines, it sometimes seems no one in Europe wants to help refugees. Record numbers are arriving in Italy and Greece this year, and yet other European governments have agreed to share less than a fifth of them. Hungary is building a wall to keep them out. For the same reason, France has Read more
Some 14.4 million people around the world were forced from their homes in 2014, the highest number of newly displaced people in 20 years. The main countries refugees were fleeing from and to shifted greatly last year, according to a new report by the United Nations. The crisis in Syria hugely affected the refugee population’s flow Read more
Bishops have been urged to increase pastoral care for travellers at international airports. A seminar of aviation and airport chaplains in Rome this month noted that airports can be places of “difficult situations asking for extra care”. “We urge the ordinaries of the areas where there are international airports to increase the pastoral care of Read more
At his post-Cabinet news conference, on Monday John Key said he had been wrong and the numbers were much lower. Mr Key had repeated the claim several times that thousands and thousands of refugees make it into the country, despite the annual refugee quota being just 750. He said many more came in under the Read more
The day of prayer for refugees and migrants is 21 June 2015 in New Zealand. Dear Brothers and Sisters, Jesus is “the evangelizer par excellence and the Gospel in person” (Evangelii Gaudium, 209). His solicitude, particularly for the most vulnerable and marginalized, invites all of us to care for the frailest and to recognize his suffering countenance, Read more
The images and words are so very similar. Back then, the German chancellor said she was “deeply upset” — today she is “appalled.” Back then, the president of the European Commission said he would never forget the dead, and that something had to change — today he claims: “The status quo is not an option.” Read more