After the Angelus:
Dear brothers and sisters, today we are celebrating the World Day for Migrants and Refugees with the theme: Migrants and Refugees: Towards a Better World, which I developed in the message that was published some time ago. I extend a special greeting to the representatives of the various ethnic communities gathered here, especially the Catholic communities of Rome. Dear friends, you are close to the Church’s heart, because the Church is a people on a journey towards the Kingdom of God which Jesus Christ has brought into our midst. Do not lose the hope in a better world. My hope is that you might live in peace in the countries that welcome you, while preserving the values of the cultures of your homeland. I would like to thank those who work with migrants to welcome and accompany them in difficult moments, to defend them from those whom Blessed Scalabrini called “traffickers in human flesh”, who want to enslave migrants! In a particular way, I wish to thank the Congregation of Missionaries of St Charles, the Scalabrinian Fathers and Sisters who do so much good for the Church and who become migrants with the migrants.
At this time, we think of the many migrants, the many refugees, of their sufferings, their lives, many times without work, without documents, in such great sorrow; and we can all together say a pray for migrants and refugees who live in the most serious and difficult situations: Hail Mary…[…]
