Beyond the emergency

“As Christians, we are called to fulfil the prophecy and have the courage of going against the tide. We have the duty to remember that migrants are human beings and that Christ died for them too. The prophecy is hard to fulfil but we have to become aware of the fact that the Gospel calls us to always side with the last.” It is the appeal of Monsignor Francesco Montenegro, archbishop of Agrigento, president of the Episcopal Commission for Migrants and of the Migrantes Foundation of the Italian Church, in view of the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, celebrated by the Church worldwide on January 19. Patrizia Caiffa interviewed him for SIR Europe. In the message for the Day, titled “Migrants and refugees: towards a better world”, Pope Francis calls for a change of heart towards migrants, replacing the culture of refusal with the culture of encounter. What is your thought? “The title of the message is significant. The Pope invites us to acknowledge a situation and to project ourselves towards a better world. We are very much on the defence when it comes to migration. Pope Francis is asking us to be brave enough to overcome the culture of refusal and start reflecting on how the world could become a better place if we seek for authentic development. It reminds us that migrants aren’t instruments nor statistical figures. With the poor there are no statistics. Every migrant is a face, a story. Now, with 250 million people on the move, migrants represent what they call the ‘sixth continent’, which is something to bear in mind.”The Pope also asks us to handle migrations “in a new, equal and efficient way”, highlighting two tools: international cooperation and solidarity. Does it mean that not enough has been done up to now? “Indeed, we are aware that not enough has been done. Still today we continue viewing the South of the world through the lenses of colonization. Migrants come to Europe asking to be compensated for a game that we played to their expense. How can it be said that Africa is a poor continent while it’s a rich country that has the raw materials that we don’t have. We exploit those resources and they continue being poor. We continue being the ‘rich’ countries that decide the fate of the world: one thing is to colonize, another is to cooperate. Until divisions between rich and poor countries, and between poor and rich people continue to exist, there will never be cooperation. Cooperation means to say: I will give you what I can and what I’ve got, you give me what you can and what you’ve got. Sadly, while managing migration flows we ought to take into account our needs, since our economy needs migrants, but we also must be aware of the problems on the opposite side of the coasts. Rich countries are obliged to help them, so that these people will stop fleeing from conflicts and poverty. But the issue doesn’t seem to be the object of major interest.”Pope Francis highlighted the need to overcome fears, prejudice, misunderstanding, with an appeal to the media to expose stereotyping and convey unbiased news. A great responsibility…”The media have great responsibilities as they foment the idea of fear. And in people’s minds migrants are comparable to criminals. But it should be borne in mind that those arriving here are always the strongest since they survived long journeys, the desert, and torture. Thus the best ones arrive, not the worst ones. We should avoid drawing a comparison between criminality-migration-diseases: to create fears means creating a distance and we will continue not seeing the truth of the matter. In fact, many situations of black work and exploitation are useful to draw profit from them. There are equivocal games on our part: we don’t want them but we exploit them.” What should politics do? “Policymakers should be brave. Nobody can stop the wind and the course of history. We can’t suddenly consider closing our doors. History and geography tell us that those poor people need to live and survive. The political realm should acknowledge it and stop considering it only as an emergency situation.”