The annual meeting of the Commission for migration of the CCEE (Council of the European Episcopal Commissions) and the National Directors for the pastoral care of migrants was held at Mechelen, in Belgium, from 17 to 19 September. Representatives of the Holy See and 24 episcopal conferences, of the Commission of the Episcopates of the European Community (COMECE), of Caritas, of the International Catholic Commission for migration (ICCM) and of the Commission of the European Churches for Migrants (CECM) attended the meeting. At the centre of the debate were the consequences of EU enlargement for the pastoral care of immigrants. From the interventions says a press release put out by the CCEE at the end of the meeting “it clearly emerged that the Church can collaborate, and is effectively collaborating, with civil society” in this field. The participants contributed to the discussion such ideas as the construction of holding or “detention” centres on the frontiers of Europe, the aims of immigration policy and the question of “security”. According to Father Beniamino Rossi, regional superior of the Scalabrinian Fathers, who offered a theological reflection on the immigration policy of the European Union, “the local Church is called to be catholic, universal in the sense of being inclusive, but also in the sense of holding together the various cultural groups that make up the local Church”. In this regard, “the presence of increasing numbers of people from the Oriental Churches (mainly Orthodox) calls the local Church to discover forms of ecumenical dialogue that correspond to the hope, long cultivated by John Paul II, that Europe may once again breathe with both lungs”. “The massive Islamic presence (and the probable future influx of Hindus and Buddhists) he concluded is a challenge to us to commit ourselves to a wider inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue”. At the end of the meeting, a document was approved in the form of a series of recommendations to be made to the European bishops.
