What Vatican’s new office of Migrant and Refugees Section does

JOHOR BAHRU (Herald Malaysia): Fr Fabio Baggio, Undersecretary of Migrants and Refugees Section – Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, presented the Vatican’s new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development initiated by Pope Francis and this took effect on January 1, 2017, currently led by Cardinal Peter Turkson.

This new Dicastery will merge with four Pontifical Councils with the intention of having a common direction and to avoid overlapping of activities: Justice and Peace, Cor Unum, Pastoral Care of Health Workers and Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People.

Within the Dicastery, a special section for the care of Migrants and Refugees was established, directly under the leadership of Pope Francis. Fr Fabio Baggio and Fr Michael Czerny were appointed as the under-secretaries of the Migrants and Refugees section to serve and report directly to the Holy Father.

The dicastery’s section for migrants and refugees is to support the mission of the various Episcopal Commissions for Migrants and Itinerants in upholding and advocating for the rights of migrants and refugees. The Vision is to note that migration is not a problem but, rather, a natural response of a human person to desire a better life, to be happy, to enjoy as an individual and as a family.

Secondly, it is to realise that migrants, refugees, and people on the move are helping us to build the unique kind of God’s mission and accomplishing God’s divine plan on earth. Migrants and refugees include people in forced migration locally and internationally, internally displaced peoples (IDPs), asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking.

Article reproduced from Herald Malaysia online