For the 105th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, which is commemorated on Sunday, September 29, 2019 Pope Francis has released a special message on the theme: “It is not just about migrants”.
These lines in italics below appear in the main text of the document and seemed somehow to naturally form a litany and a prayer.
It is not just about ….
It is not just about migrants:
it is also about our fears.
It is not just about migrants:
it is about charity
It is not just about migrants:
it is about our humanity
It is not just about migrants:
it is a question of seeing that no one is excluded.
It is not just about migrants:
it is about putting the last in first place.
It is not just about migrants:
it is about the whole person, about all people.
It is not just about migrants:
it is about building the city of God and man.
The full text of the message is HERE
(See brief extract below)
“Dear brothers and sisters, our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: Welcome, Protect, Promote and Integrate.
Yet these verbs do not apply only to migrants and refugees. They describe the Church’s mission to all those living in the existential peripheries, who need to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated.
If we put those four verbs into practice, we will help build the city of God and man. We will promote the integral human development of all people. We will also help the world community to come closer to the goals of sustainable development that it has set for itself and that, lacking such an approach, will prove difficult to achieve.
In a word, it is not only the cause of migrants that is at stake; it is not just about them, but about all of us, and about the present and future of the human family.
Migrants, especially those who are most vulnerable, help us to read the “signs of the times”. Through them, the Lord is calling us to conversion, to be set free from exclusivity, indifference and the throw-away culture.
Through them, the Lord invites us to embrace fully our Christian life and to contribute, each according to his or her proper vocation, to the building up of a world that is more and more in accord with God’s plan.
In expressing this prayerful hope, and through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Way, I invoke God’s abundant blessings upon all the world’s migrants and refugees and upon all those who accompany them on their journey”.
From the Vatican, 27 May 2019
(Note: Highlights use in body of text about are my own).