St Luke’s Presbyterian Church in Remuera has put up a billboard showing Mary and Joseph as refugees on a leaky boat being turned away from the European coast. Minister Reverend Glynn Cardy had previously been behind controversial billboards at St Matthew-in-the-city – including one showing Mary and Joseph in bed with the caption, “Poor Joseph, Read more
Since the early 2000s, Bishop Viard College has welcomed the refugee community of Porirua. “Their refugee backgrounds add life and experience to the school,” said Jane Bourke, a whanau leader at the college who has an interest in refugee students. Three Burmese students who joined at the end of last term are the latest additions Read more
A surge of migrant deaths in deadly voyages across the Mediterranean Sea has become a modern-day refugee crisis. But the Rev. Mussie Zerai, a 40-year-old Roman Catholic priest from tiny Eritrea, north of Ethiopia, has moved to help migrants trapped in the North African deserts and rickety wooden boats drifting across the sea. “It is Read more
German police have called for refugees to be housed along religious and ethnic lines after a series of mass brawls in emergency accommodation. Last week, a fight between up to 200 Syrians and Afghans in a Leipzig shelter turned into a running battle with residents using table legs as clubs. In Lower Saxony, police reported Read more
The Archbishop of Canterbury has offered to host one or two refugee families in a cottage in the grounds of his Lambeth Palace residence. A spokesman for Archbishop Justin Welby noted that Jesus was a refugee. The spokesman said a four-bedroom cottage at Lambeth Palace in London could house a “family or two”, adding that Read more
Pope Francis is putting up a Syrian refugee family from Damascus in a Vatican apartment, aides revealed last week. The Christian family is the first of two that the Catholic leader has promised to find space for in the Vatican’s two parishes. This is part of a broader Church effort to help shape Europe’s response Read more
“Now our people are criticising us. They want us to find them flights, visas and welcome centres in other countries. This is impossible. A state cannot do this. And neither can the Church.” The Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad, Louis Raphael I, says he is concerned. He is not convinced about certain consequences of Europe’s new Read more
The heartbreaking photo of the little Syrian refugee boy washed up dead on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey strikingly illustrates the tragic plight of desperate refugees – mostly Syrian – fleeing for their lives from the Islamic State and other violent groups in the Middle East and Africa. The 3-year-old boy, named Aylan, along with Read more
One reason you can tell Pope Francis is a political and rhetorical genius is that he is able to tell the Christian story (arguably the most-told story in the Western world) as if it were new again — and not just new, but radical. Disruptive, even. He’s spent a lot of the last year turning Read more
Scottish Archbishop Leo Cushley had offered to have refugees in his home. “This is the greatest migration of people into Europe since the Second World War,” he said, referring to the influx of refugees from Syria. “We are now facing something unprecedented since that time,” he said. “As a visible example of our willingness to Read more