SIMN at the Regional Bishops Consultation on Migration in Washington

On June 2-4, Representatives of Bishops’ Conferences of the United States, Canada, Mexico and representatives of eleven other Episcopal Conferences, including the CELAM (Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean), participated in the 2010 Regional Bishops’ Consultation on Migration in Washington DC.

Archbishop Antonio Maria Vegliò, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People at the Holy See, opened the Regional Consultation. His opening remarks focused on how to better address the needs of migrants and refugees in the Americas and confront the deeper causes of migration through a more efficient coordination of services, pastoral care and advocacy policies. In his speech, he stated that the starting points for ministering to migrants, refugees, trafficked persons are first to understand their situation in all its components, personal, social, economic, and political, in the light of God’s Word and second the commitment to get involved. Indeed, the causes of migrants’ uprootedness are to be solved. In her involvement, the Catholic Church is guided by the “permanent principles” of her “social doctrine” [that] constitute the very heart of Catholic social teaching.

The bishops discussed several issues: first, the current situation of people on the move in their respective countries, along with the treatment of aliens residing in or in transit; second, the impact on the communities left behind; third, the implications of these phenomena on the Church’s pastoral care; forth, advocacy and public policy, along with service responses; and finally, the coordination of efforts at the regional level and the search for successful models of pastoral care. In this debate, the Executive Director of the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN), Fr. Leonir Chiarello, intervened with a presentation on "Migration from a Global Perspective and the Commitment of the Scalabrinian Congregation."

These consultations have grown out of regular meetings among the migration-related committees of the U.S. and Mexico episcopal conferences that began in 1999, subsequently resulting in the historic joint pastoral letter, Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope, issued in 2003. Since then, the consultations have been expanded to other bishops’ Conferences and their staff working with human mobility in Canada and Latin America, especially in Central America and the Caribbean. Discussions and meetings strengthen collaboration among the participating episcopal conferences on behalf of the migrants, transcend borders and allow for more comprehensive responses.