The Migrants and Refugees Section (M&R Section) is a section on
migrants and
refugees
A refugee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as ...
included in the Vatican
Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development () is a dicastery of the Roman curia.
The Vatican announced the creation of the dicastery on 31 August 2016 and it became effective 1 January 2017. Cardinal Peter Turkson was named its fi ...
(IHD).
History
Appalled by the conditions and treatment of great numbers of migrants, refugees, displaced and trafficked persons, Pope Francis explained to several thousand representatives of Popular Movements in the Audience Hall on 5 November 2016 that "In the department
HDCardinal Peter Turkson heads, there is a section concerned with those situations. I decided that, at least for a while, that section would be directly under the Pope, because here we have a disgraceful situation that can only be described by a word that in
Lampedusa
Lampedusa ( , , ; ; ) is the largest island of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean Sea.
The ''comune'' of Lampedusa e Linosa is part of the Sicilian province of Agrigento which also includes the smaller islands of Linosa and Lamp ...
came spontaneously to my lips: shame." In mid-December, he named
Michael Czerny
Michael Felix Czerny (born 18 July 1946) is a Czech-born Canadian Catholic prelate who has served as prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development since 2022. He was under secretary of the dicastery's Migrants and Refugees ...
S.J., a Canadian
Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
, and
Fabio Baggio C.S, an Italian
Scalabrinian
The Congregation of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo (), commonly called the Scalabrinian Missionaries, is a Catholic religious institute of brothers and priests founded by Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, Bishop of Piacenza in Italy, ...
, to serve as under-secretaries of IHD to be "occupied specifically in the care of migrants and refugees."
While under the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the M&R Section is "directly under guidance" of Pope Francis since its creation "for the time being", following the will of Francis.
Purpose
"The M&R Section's primary mission is to support the Church – locally, regionally, internationally – accompanying people at all stages of migration, especially those who are in one way or another forced to move or to flee." The Section's concern includes those who are compelled to migrate: asylum seekers, refugees, internally displaced people, as well as other international and internal migrants. It devotes particular attention to migrants who experience hardships and suffering in the countries of origin or destination or in transit: for example, people fleeing conflicts, persecutions and humanitarian emergencies (both natural and human-made), victims of human trafficking, migrants with irregular status, exploited migrant workers, and vulnerable migrant women, youth, and children.
During the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, the M&R section publishes weekly bulletins "aimed at sharing information and heightening awareness regarding problems, solutions and initiatives put into practice by the various Catholic actors who accompany vulnerable people and communities on the move."
References
External links
Official Website
Catholic missions
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