“Female migration has grown drastically over the last 20 years. Today some 50% of international migrants are women”. This is the main finding that emerged from the last meeting of the national directors of the pastoral care of migrants, coming from 15 European countries. Held in Strasbourg from 27 to 30 September, the meeting was promoted by the Committee for Migrants of the CCEE, the Council of the European Episcopal Conferences. “The phenomenon is a new one – said Catherine Withol, of the national Centre of Scientific Research (Paris) due both to the factors that impel migration towards the host countries and to the poverty of the countries of origin”. Migration has a new face, which – she said – “involves a change in behaviour, often due to the difficulties of insertion, to a decline in the birth rate, but also to a traffic in women and prostitution”. Many difficulties were pointed out with regard to this problem. First of all, emphasis was placed on “the poverty that afflicts the countries of Eatern Europe, Asia and the South, the traffic linked to money and the crisis of the meaning of life and its values”. In response to these challenges, “each church is called to action, and to an indispensable ecumenical commitment” as recalled by the Ecumenical Charter of the European Churches signed in April 2001. This commitment is expressed by giving “more scope and responsibility to immigrant women within the parish communities; by reinforcing the support to clandestine immigrant women; by supporting national governments in their efforts to crack down on the traffic in women and by protecting women both in their countries of origin and in those of destination”.
