By Rani Punnaserril
Bengaluru, March 15, 2023: The national commission for migrants under the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India has devised new ways to reach out to the displaced in a more pastoral way.
The commission organized a meeting of its regional secretaries where they received inputs from the Vatican Dicastery of Integral Human Development and the Geneva-based International Catholic migration Commission.
The March 12-14 program held at Paalana, the pastoral center of the archdiocese of Bangalore, addressed the theme “The Pastoral Care of the migrants in the multicultural context of India: A synodal way.”
The meeting stressed that service to the migrants does not aim to make them dependent, but enable them to become viable and sustainable members in society. By welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating the migrants and displaced into mainstream society, the commission ensures they live in dignity and freedom, the participants said.
The conference has suggested that the church’s priority should be to save their life and safeguard their human dignity. The pastoral orientations and teachings of Pope Francis on the care of the migrants have to be taken up effectively through various programs.
The regional secretaries, in collaboration with their diocesan counterparts, plan to draw up plans where migrants will become part of the decision making for their programs for their empowerment. Good Samaritan attitude has to be fostered in the institutions and among individuals, the participants stressed.
The secretaries plan to come together periodically to review the progress and plan for the future.
The meeting wants the Church to address various forms of exploitations the migrants face such as wage theft, human trafficking and the increasing bonded labor. For this, the Church people at the origin and destination states should work together for the benefit of the migrants.
Archbishop Victor Henry Thakur of Raipur, the chairman of the commission, expressed deep concern over the situation of all the migrants. He called for interreligious dialogue to address the issues in a collective manner.
Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore called upon the Catholic religious serving various dioceses to become part of the migrants’ ministry as they can play a better role in caring for the migrants.
Monsignor Fabio Baggio, the Undersecretary, Dicastery of Integral Human Development, Vatican, reiterated the expectations of Pope Francis regarding Synodality. He said Synod demands a church which is participatory and in communion with all the faithful for a mission to reach out the most needy and the people in the peripheries.
He further said the church leaders need to be sensitive to the problems and struggles of the distressed migrant workers in India who are much more ruined and devastated due to the after effects of pandemic and economic slowdown in our country.
Christine Nathan, president of International Catholic Migration Commission, pointed out the prevalence of widespread discrimination and division in the churches where the migrants are perceived as outsiders and not welcomed wholeheartedly.
She said the local church in the destinations should self-introspect so that they could find the face of Jesus in the migrants who come to a new place in search of livelihood. They are to be considered human beings irrespective of their color, creed or religious affiliations.
Father Jaison Vadassery, the commission’s executive secretary, and the secretaries of 14 regions stressed the need to start a migrant cell in every diocese to offer minimum services for the migrants.
Networking between various dioceses, the religious congregations and civil society organizations in the source and destinations will help coordinate the work among the migrants more effectively.
The meeting wants the church to empower the migrants so that they can reach out to others in distress and facing the threat of evils such as human trafficking, bonded labor and slavery.
The report on the conference of the Commission for Migrants speaks of very lofty ideas. But these appear to be pillars without any base/foundation. How does the Commission propose to address the issue of migrant workers across 174 dioceses (132 Roman, 31 Syro-Malabar, and 11 Syro-Malankara)? Where is the database of migrant workers to devise the way forward? Did any participant (regional secretary or otherwise) produce diocese-wise statistics on migrant workers? Does CBCI have any state wise and diocese wise credible database on migrant workers? It is very easy to hold out the expectations of Pope Francis but these may be sky-high bearing in mind the logistics and ground realities of migrant workers.
Even many state governments do not have credible data on migrant workers. On 28th February 2023 the Calcutta High Court sought a detailed report from the West Bengal government on the statistics of migrant labourers in the state because the state government had been unable to provide a clear picture on migrant workers. The petitioner Biswajit Mukhopadhyay had filed an RTI for the same in 2022 after which the state government informed him about the absence of specific information. Other states (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh) where a high percentage of their workforce is outward-migrant workers, must have cut a similar sorry figure like West Bengal. The states do not want to show that many of their locals have to migrate to other states for lack of employment in the home states. Hence the lack of statistics! The Calcutta High Court has called the bluff and caught the bull by its horns.
Several years ago I had proposed to my parish priest and also the Archbishop of Calcutta and his Vicar General to start a database of families in each parish. I had also sent a simple database structure including education of family members, their blood group, self-declared family income, etc. The logic was to identify the families who are in real need of help (educational and healthcare assistance). But the idea was put in the cold storage. I think India’s Church Hierarchy does not believe in maintaining any authentic data. Otherwise how can two consecutive censuses in 2001 and 2011 show Christians at 2.3% of the Indian Population? No one from the Hierarchy contested the census results as it suits them! I hope the Commission for Migrants does not work the same way. It must start from the base i.e. create a systematic and database (which is upgraded at regular intervals) of migrant workers from the parish level to make a meaningful contribution towards addressing the issue of migrant workers. The Migrant Commissions of each diocese must also ensure that other than spiritual care, they also help migrant workers link with various social security/benefits like Aadhar, ration cards, health insurance, mother-and-child healthcare, direct benefit transfers (DBT), etc.