Very few Vatican documents on world events are exciting. Most are broad, stress continuities, offer a detached, almost bloodless, view of the state of the world and give the Catholic Church a central and serene role in it. But these qualities can be helpful when local response to these events is febrile and anxious.
So the Vatican guidelines on ministry to forcibly displaced persons provide a helpful mirror to reflect the public Australian response to asylum seekers. It offers a long view of Catholic reflection on refugees and a broad perspective on the human reality of having to seek protection.
The consistent core of Catholic teaching has been the insistence that people who are forced to leave their homes are human beings who matter. For that reason the document brings together categories of people whose are usually artificially separated: those persecuted both within and outside their own nations, those trafficked for sex and work, those in the refugee camps and cities in neighbouring countries, and those living in developed nations. All are seen as human beings who make a claim on other human beings by their precarious plight.
The political reality of forced migration is also described in broad terms.
Most people who flee their own nations remain in adjacent countries, hoping to be able to return home. These countries carry by far the greatest burden of supporting refugees and are usually the least equipped to do so. But in the host country they are also often forced to live precarious lives in fear of violence and extortion.
Those who do find their way to developed nations also find increasing hostility and lack of acceptance. These attitudes are often rooted in xenophobic and racist attitudes that are encouraged by politicians.
Against this background the document sets the way we as individuals and societies should respond to people forced to flee their own nations. The principles guiding the response are that each human being matters and that their human dignity should be respected. 'The first point of reference should not be the interests of the State or national security but the human person.'
Central to this is 'the need to live in community, a basic requirement of the very nature of human beings.' Human beings are linked by their shared humanity, and our solidarity means that as individuals and as societies we are responsible to each other and particularly to those in need. It is not right to