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Fear and doubt should not determine response to immigrants, Pope says

January 14, 2018
Pope Francis leaves after celebrating Mass at the Vatican, Sunday. Pope Francis says while fear of migrants is
Pope Francis leaves after celebrating Mass at the Vatican, Sunday. Pope Francis says while fear of migrants is "legitimate’ it’s a sin if that causes hostility. — AP

VATICAN CITY — Mutual fears between immigrants and their new communities are understandable, but must not prevent new arrivals from being welcomed and integrated, Pope Francis said on Sunday in a special Mass to mark the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.

Francis, a keen defender of the rights of migrants, was addressing a congregation including migrants and refugees from some 50 countries, whose flags festooned the area around the altar in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.

"Local communities are sometimes afraid that the newly arrived will disturb the established order, will "steal" something they have long labored to build up," he said, while "the newly arrived ... are afraid of confrontation, judgment, discrimination, failure."

"Having doubts and fears is not a sin. The sin is to allow these fears to determine our responses, to limit our choices, to compromise respect and generosity, to feed hostility and rejection."

As politicians and civil society grapple with the mass movement of people around the world, with flashpoints including in the Mediterranean, and between Myanmar and Bangladesh, the pope has repeatedly urged support for those who migrate.

Argentina-born Francis, who was the first non-European elected to the post in nearly 1,300 years, has criticized President Donald Trump's stated intention to build a wall to stop illegal migrants crossing the US border with Mexico.

The leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics also met Muslim refugees in Myanmar and Bangladesh last year and called for decisive action to solve political problems that cause many to flee.

On Sunday, he said newcomers must "know and respect the laws, the culture and the traditions of the countries that take them in". Communities, meanwhile, have "to open themselves without prejudices to (newcomers') rich diversity, to understand the hopes and potential of the newly arrived as well as their fears and vulnerabilities".

Meanwhile, Pope Francis starts a trip to Chile and Peru on Monday, attempting to inject new confidence in the staunchly Catholic countries where the Church's credibility has been severely damaged by sexual abuse scandals.

On his visit to Peru, the second leg of the Jan. 15-22 tour, Francis will also find a destabilizing political corruption crisis has reopened wounds from one of the country's darkest periods of human rights abuses.

In Chile, where the Argentine pope arrives on Monday night, Catholics have planned daily protests against his 2015 appointment of Bishop Juan Barros to head the small diocese of Osorno, a small city south of the Chilean capital.

Barros has been accused of protecting his former mentor, Father Fernando Karadima, whom a Vatican investigation in 2011 found guilty of abusing teenage boys over many years. Karadima has denied the allegations and Barros said he was unaware of any wrongdoing.

The situation for the Church was complicated last week by the leak in Chile of a 2015 letter from the pope to local bishops showing that the Vatican had planned to ask Barros to take a one-year leave at the end of his previous post in 2014. That plan went awry and Barros was appointed to Osorno.

A poll by Santiago-based think tank Latinobarometro this month showed that the number of Chileans calling themselves Catholics fell to 45 percent last year, from 74 percent in 1995.

There have been a series of attacks on Catholic churches in the capital ahead of the pope's visit, including one with a home-made bomb where unidentified vandals left a pamphlet reading "Pope Francis, the next bomb will be in your robe".

No one has been injured and no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Abuse scandals will also cast a shadow on the pope's stop in Peru, where he arrives on Thursday.

Last week Francis ordered the Vatican takeover of an elite Catholic society in Peru. The society's founder is accused of sexually and physically abusing children and former members of the group.

On Tuesday he flies south to Temuco in Chile's Araucania region, home of the Mapuche, who accuse the state and private companies of taking their ancestral land, stripping it of natural resources and of using heavy handed enforcement against their communities.

President Michelle Bachelet last year asked for forgiveness from the Mapuche community for such "errors and horrors". — Reuters


January 14, 2018
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