JRS on Pope’s latest appeal for more solidarity towards migrants

(Vatican Radio) As Pope Francis makes a new appeal for more openness and solidarity towards migrants, the International Director of Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), Father Tom Smolich, says the Pope's remarks are not just calling for a different approach towards refugees and migrants but are also stressing the importance of a face-to-face encounter with migrants to quell the fears felt by many people towards them. Father Smolich was interviewed by Susy Hodges.

Listen to the interview with Father Tom Smolich of Jesuit Refugee Service: 

Pope Francis' appeal during his Wednesday general audience for more solidarity towards migrants came the day after residents of a town on Italy’s Adriatic coast formed a blockade to prevent the arrival of 12 female migrants, one of them pregnant, who were to have been housed in a local hostel.

The Pope's remarks on migration also came on the heels of a new UN report saying that the Mediterranean Sea crossings by migrants trying to reach Europe have been three times deadlier this year than in 2015. The report estimated that one out of every 47 people attempting the crossing from North Africa to Italy during 2016 has died at sea.

Father Smolich said he “fully agreed” with the Pope when he said that putting up walls and barriers to try to stop migrants and refugees from coming to richer nations only encourages the criminal trafficking of these increasingly desperate people. 

Political leaders are doing their best to fan the flames

Stressing that it is our “Christian duty and Christian love “to do something different" when it comes to our treatment of migrants, Father Smolich said he regretted that a number of political leaders across the world “are doing their best to fan the flames” of fear and prejudice towards migrants and refugees.

Asked for his reaction to the incident where residents in an Italian town formed a blockade to stop a group of female migrants from being housed in a local hostel, the JRS Director said Pope Francis is stressing that if people in Europe or elsewhere actually get to meet a migrant face-to-face... “to encounter one another as human beings”... then most of those fears and prejudice towards them can evaporate.

When they (the migrants) are perceived “as the other, the force, the enemy, then the people blockade, people are frightened,” he said.

Father Smolich concluded by saying that “all of us” need to respond to “this human crisis” of migration and refugees and if we spoke out more about this and lobbied our political leaders to tackle this issue and show more compassion, then the leaders in turn could not “get away with doing things (on the migration issue) that a lot of people are not particularly happy about.”