Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People, told the Global Forum on Migration and Development: “An irregular migration status, in fact, does not mean criminality.” Archbishop Marchetto identifies poverty and war in developing nations and the need for labor in industrial countries to be the main causes of migration. In what is a virtual consensus among Catholic bishops in the West, including the Pope, true Catholic faith does not look to the letter of the law when it evaluates immigration and immigration status, especially if these laws are not just. Too often, immigration is viewed in terms of legality only where the sovereignty of the nation is elevated by the nationalistic imagination and where the main question posed is: “Did the migrant break the law?”
Paul over at 153 has an excellent reply to one particular blogger who embodies this distorted “law of the land” and “national sovereignty” mentality despite being an immigrant himself. Of course, this mentality is at odds with the Catholic Church’s consistent tradition on the question of immigration, a tradition that dates back to Christ himself, an ‘undocumented’ refugee for a time in Egypt. Even more prominent and allegedly informed Catholics, such as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, have a difficult time viewing the migrant from the standpoint of Christ rather than from the standpoint of national law. But that’s what makes the Gospel so very radical in its nature as revelation–it shatters our categories of geographical and cultural localism. According to the Gospel of life, which illumines the natural law inscribed on our own hearts, national laws do not come before the basic rights and needs of the human person.
For papal statements on immigration see the following:
Benedict XVI’s 2007 Address to the Diplomatic Corps Accredited to the Holy See and his Messages for World Migration Day
John Paul II on the Care for Migrants
John Paul II on illegal immigration
Pius XII’s Exsul Familia Nazarethana
For a host of resources from the Vatican, the U.S. bishops, theologians and common Catholic bloggers, consider these
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