From OSV News:
Migrants and refugees often are “privileged witnesses of hope through their resilience and trust in God,” Pope Leo XIV said.
“Often they maintain their strength while seeking a better future, in spite of the obstacles that they encounter,” he said Oct. 2 during a meeting with participants in the conference “Refugees and Migrants in Our Common Home,” organized by the Augustinian-run Villanova University in suburban Philadelphia.
The Vatican dicasteries for Promoting Integral Human Development and for Culture and Education and the U.S. bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services were among the co-sponsors of the conference, held in Rome Oct. 1-3 just before the Jubilee of Migrants and the Jubilee of Missions Oct. 4-5.
Pope Leo encouraged participants to share migrants’ and refugees’ stories of steadfast faith and hope so that they could be “an inspiration for others and assist in developing ways to address the challenges that they have faced in their own lives.”
The pope also returned to a theme he had mentioned in September when discussing migration — the “globalization of powerlessness.”
Overcoming the widespread sense that no one can make a difference “requires patience, a willingness to listen, the ability to identify with the pain of others and the recognition that we have the same dreams and the same hopes,” Pope Leo XIV told the group.
Faced with a growing sense of being unable to change or improve the situation, he said, “we risk becoming immobile, silent and sad, thinking that nothing can be done when we are faced with innocent suffering.”
Read all his remarks here.
