Addressing Xenophobia through Religion: A Catholic and Interreligious Response

By Hannah L. Pepperidge
June 2017

In examining the wars on terror and the wars on drugs, one major impediment to
arousing interest and empathy in the West lies in the xenophobic attitudes of those who fear the
phenomenon of immigration into North America and Europe. As people of faith, we wish to
address this xenophobia by insisting, through the lenses of faith, on the rights of those who
immigrate.
As a Catholic writer, this author will draw primarily on official Catholic social teaching,
then briefly overview some teachings on immigration from other religions and from secular
human rights agencies.

Human migration represents one of the most natural forces on the planet. Birds migrate;
butterflies migrate; and people migrate, too. However, the erection of borders has presented a
formidable challenge to these natural phenomena, disrupting the flow of families and
communities across natural patterns of ebb and flow.

Indeed, this artificial border forms one of the major offenses of colonial imperialism against
Indigenous peoples of the Americas, who naturally moved with the seasons to different regions
of the continent, until imperial powers arrived and asserted unnatural boundaries, partitioning
families and communities into politically-defined divisions. When Chicanx activists envision
Aztln, they bring to memory the idea of an ancestral homeland in the southwestern United
States, in their cosmovision the center of the universe, out of which an entire race of Meso-
American people came to birth and then spread out into the rest of the continent, moving freely
across terrain to populate the regions later known as North and Central America.1 Over and
against this vision of the world, the United States, Mexico, and other contemporary political
states of the region have erected borders, an act which profoundly oppresses indigenous and
other peoples who perceive the world along more ancestral and primordial lines, as well as
those who may agree in theory with the idea of borders but argue against how governments use
them to exclude and divide contemporary people, with dire effects on human flourishing and
survival.
1
Here the author wishes to acknowledge her situated identity as an Anglo person, an outsider to this Meso-
American cosmovision who seeks to explain this vision to other outsiders. She invites any and all corrections or
modifications to her limited understanding of this cosmovision.
While in earlier eras, people may have migrated as a natural and perhaps cyclical phenomenon,
today, most people who leave their land for another do so for economically and/or politically
compelling reasons: forces either push them to leave, or pull them toward a new land. These
push and pull factors often involve matters intricately woven into Catholic social teaching, such
as labor rights, a just wage, access to food and water, and freedom from violence and warfare.
Hence, the right of a person to migrate involves her or his right to just access these conditions
for human flourishing, and hence, the right to migrate constitutes an essential component of the
promotion of peace. On an even deeper level, the right not to migrate2 forms an even more
essential component, for many people feel compelled to migrate against their will, and in an
ideal world, all persons would have access to everything they need for a safe and healthy life in
their ancestral land, the land of their family and friends and culture and history.

The Catholic Church, in her encyclicals, speaks directly to this right to or not to migrate. For
instance, in the first great social encyclical, Rerum Novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII writes,
...[N]o one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of
living a decent and happy life. (#47)3 Clearly, mitigating push and pull factors compel a
person to leave, and these just reasons legitimate the migration to other countries. As Pope
John XXIII declares in Pacem in Terris (1963),
Every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence
within the confines of his own state. When there are just reasons for it, he must
be permitted to emigrate to other countries and to take up residence there.(#25)

This freedom, or right, to migrate, leads to responsibilities on the part of residents in the country
that receives the migrant. Pope John VI articulates some of these moral obligations of receiving
countries in Populorum Progressio (1967):
We cannot insist too much on the duty of giving foreigners a hospitable
reception. It is a duty imposed by human solidarity and by Christian charity, and it
is incumbent upon families and education institutions in the host nations...[T]hey
should be welcomed in the spirit of brotherly love (#67).

2
Cf. David Bacon, The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (Beacon, 2013).
3
Thanks to the Catholic Legal Immigration Network for their collection of quotes from encyclicals about migration,
from which Ive drawn extensively but not exclusively.
https://cliniclegal.org/sites/default/files/modern_catholic_social_teaching_on_immigration_0.pdf
While some may note that the above quote refers only to foreigners in general, and not to
immigrants, John VI goes on to insist,
Emigrant workers should also be given a warm welcome. Their living conditions
are often inhuman, and they must scrimp on their earnings in order to send help
to their families who have remained behind in their native land in poverty (#69).

Four years later, in 1971, John VI speaks even more forcefully in Octogesima Adveniens,
Right to emigrate4: We are thinking of the precarious situation of a great number
of emigrant workers whose condition as foreigners makes it all the more difficult
for them to make any sort of social vindication, in spite of their real participation
in the economic effort of the country that receives them. It is urgently necessary
for people to go beyond a narrowly nationalist attitude in their regard and to give
them a charter which will assure them a right to emigrate, favor their integration,
facilitate their professional advancement and give them access to decent housing
where, if such is the case, their families can join them. (#17)

St. John Paul II reinforces John VIs belief in a right to emigrate when he writes in Laborem
Exercens (1981),
Man has the right to leave his native land for various motives--and also the right
to return--in order to seek better conditions of life in another country. This fact is
certainly not without difficulties of various kinds. Above all it generally constitutes
a loss for the country which is left behind. It is the departure of a person who is
also a member of a great community united by history, tradition and culture; and
that person must begin life in the midst of another society united by a different
culture and very often by a different language (#23).

One notes, also, John Paul IIs reference to the uprooting nature of having to leave ones own
land for another, which underscores the importance of sociologist David Bacons emphasis on
the right not to migrate, in order to allow people the right to stay in their home communities.5
This right not to migrate also implies an intentional effort toward ecological healing for, as
Pope Francis writes in Laudato Si (2015),

4
This right to emigrate to leave ones country also, of course, implies a right to immigrate -- to enter another
country.
5
See Footnote #13.
 There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the
growing poverty caused by environmental degradation. They are not recognized
by international conventions as refugees; they bear the loss of the lives they
have left behind, without enjoying any legal protection whatsoever. Sadly, there
is widespread indifference to such suffering, which is even now taking place
throughout our world (#25).

This issue weighs heavily on the pastoral heart of Pope Francis, as he laments in Evangelii
Gaudium (2013):
Migrants present a particular challenge for me, since I am the pastor of a Church
without frontiers, a Church which considers herself mother to all. For this reason,
I exhort all countries to a generous openness which, rather than fearing the loss
of local identity, will prove capable of creating new forms of cultural synthesis.
How beautiful are those cities which overcome paralyzing mistrust, integrate
those who are different and make this very integration a new factor of
development! (#210).

The Church clearly sees herself in a maternal role, and followers of Christ, as disciples of
peace, have a clear commission from in encyclicals, from Pope Francis all the way back through
Pope Leo XIII, to serve as generous and tender emissaries of a peaceful order by welcoming
immigrants and insisting upon their rights to migrate and their rights to not migrate.

The Church also speaks powerfully about migration in the regional context of the Western
Hemisphere, in continental America North, Central and South America as one region. St. John
Paul II insists upon this conception of the hemisphere as a singular America in the apostolic
exhortation Ecclesia in America (1999):
The decision to speak of America in the singular was an attempt to express not
only the unity which in some way already exists, but also to point to that closer
bond which the peoples of the continent seek and which the Church wishes to
foster as part of her own mission, as she works to promote the communion of all
in the Lord (#5).

The author recalls, from a study abroad experience in South America, the indignation expressed
by classmates when people from the United States would refer to themselves exclusively as
Americans. The South Americans insisted, We are Americans, too! The entire continent is
America. John Paul II underscores this perspective, and thus forges anew a belief in the
solidarity of this hemisphere, a solidarity which leads to greater acceptance of the right to (and
not to) migrate and greater hospitality on the part of the receiving country.

The Catholic bishops of Mexico and the United States, in the 2003 pastoral letter Strangers No
Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope, describe the challenges of migration between the
two countries. In this magnum opus on migration, they thoroughly embody the pastoral cycle of
see-judge-act as they observe the contemporary phenomena of migration, analyze it through
sociological and theological lenses, and then cast a vision for the Church and for political
leaders to respond. They firmly defend the right to migrate as well as the right not to migrate by
calling for justice in local conditions such that no one should have to leave.
Catholic teaching has a long and rich tradition in defending the right to migrate.
Based on the life and teachings of Jesus, the Church's teaching has provided the
basis for the development of basic principles regarding the right to migrate for
those attempting to exercise their God-given human rights. Catholic teaching
also states that the root causes of migrationpoverty, injustice, religious
intolerance, armed conflictsmust be addressed so that migrants can remain in
their homeland and support their families (#28).

We also pledge to support the creation of the necessary conditions so that all
may enjoy the fruit of their work and life in their homeland, if they so wish (#105).

In this pastoral letter, the bishops of the U.S. and Mexico distinctively act as a broker for peace
if people will listen to the Churchs voice!

In the 1968 Medelln document, the bishops of Latin America delineate a Christian vision for
peace as consisting in three components: peace as justice; peace as a permanent task; and
peace as the fruit of love. In this effort to wage peace, they insist, Peace is not found, it is built
and the Christian man is an artisan of peace (#14). Would that more Catholics and people of
good will knew of this document!

The Latin American bishops convened again in Puebla, in 1979, during which time they issued a
conference document that, like the Medelln document, speaks not so much to migration
directly, but rather to the construction of peaceful societies in the various areas of Latin America
with the indirect aim of promoting the right to stay home the right not to migrate.

In 2002, the bishops of Central America, in their pastoral letter To the People of God
Journeying in Central America, articulated the plight of many people in their region, explaining
the factors that disrupt and threaten peace (#1) and drive migration especially from El
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua (#3). Among these factors, they mention
unemployment, income disparity, human rights abuses, and corruption. The bishops advocate,
as a means to peace, equitable and sustainable development, food security, the protection of
small businesses, and a respect for human ecology as rooted in the family (#4). These
practical measures provide a path for those seeking to wage peace in the region.

In 2007, the bishops of Latin America reconvened at Aparecida, where once again the Church
insists upon the role of the Church in waging peace with regard to the right to migrate. The
bishops first recognize that people often feel forced to migrate against their will millions of
people migrate or find themselves forced to migrate inside or beyond their respective countries
(#70) and calls upon the Church to denounce abuses of migrants and work for change in the
world:
One of the tasks of the Church on behalf of migrants is unquestionably prophetic
critique of the attacks that they often suffer, and also the effort, together with civil
society organizations, to influence the governments of countries, to achieve a
migration policy that takes into account the rights of people on the move (#414).

While the Church has unequivocally declared support for the right to migrate and the right to just
conditions to allow one to not migrate, the Church must act in conjunction with the civil society
organizations as mentioned in the Aparecida document. This, of course, entails national
governments, but perhaps most importantly, the United Nations, whose Declaration of Human
Rights provides a summary secular counterpart to the Churchs social teaching.

With particular regard to the issue of migration, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
states unequivocally, Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to
return to his country (Article 13.2).6 At the 2016 UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, the
President of the 71st Session of the General Assembly of the UN, Peter Thomson, stated:

6
UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html
 We must continue to give the refugee and migrant crisis the attention, energy
and support it needs. We must redouble our efforts to protect the human rights
of refugees and migrants. We must counter racism, xenophobia and other forms
of intolerance that seek to dehumanise [sic] vulnerable people in need. And,
most importantly, we must push for universal implementation of the 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development, which will help to address many of the root causes
that drive people to flee.7

This 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes such universal goals as no poverty;
zero hunger; clean water and sanitation; decent work and economic growth; climate
action; and peace, justice, and strong institutions. These institutions would include, in
addition to secular establishments, the Catholic Church, as well as other religious structures
such as Islam and Judaism, and other world religions.8

Islam, for example, has the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which addresses
-- among other topics such as the right to life, family, education, work, property the right to
migrate:
Every man shall have the right, within the framework of the Shari'ah, to free
movement and to select his place of residence whether within or outside his
country and if persecuted, is entitled to seek asylum in another country.9

This declaration, in tandem with the Catholic encyclicals, provides a basis by which Christians
and Muslims may work together for peace with regard to the right to migrate.

Judaism also has the Declaration on Judaism and Human Rights, adopted in Montreal, Canada,
in 1974, which explicitly lends support to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
discusses the war on poverty; human rights law; eliminating racial, ethnic and religious
discrimination; anti-Semitism; and preserving cultures. It calls upon the international community
to defend the rights of Jews, and calls for Jews to rise to the defense of the rights of all people:
We call on Jewish communities to preserve and sharpen the traditional sensitivity of the Jewish

7
UN High Level Meeting on Refugees and Migrants, Closing Remarks,
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/events/ga/documents/2016/closing/pga-71-
closingremarks.pdf
8
UN Sustainable Development Goals, http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
9
Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/cairodeclaration.html
conscience to the plight of the downtrodden, whoever and wherever they may be. In closing, it
pledges to work with representatives of other religious traditions to promote human rights. 10

Jewish, Christian and Islamic voices join with Buddhist and Hindu perspectives in the recent
interreligious document published by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
Welcoming the Stranger, which culls faith-based perspectives from five different religions and
presents affirmations of welcome for immigrants, in eight major world languages, as common
statements that adherents from all five religions can proclaim.11

These statements on human rights and on the dignity of immigrants, proclaimed by major world
religions, provide a common basis upon which the Catholic Church may collaborate
interreligiously in her pursuit of nonviolence and peace in the world. They also underscore a
major point: Empathy plays a primordial role in the nature of the human being, and this empathy
finds expression in many world religions, as well as in the lives of those who adhere to no
particular faith. As Celia Deane-Drummond explains12, empathy has existed since prehistoric
times in the human race. Upon this foundation, the Church may appeal to the good will of all
people in her advocacy for peace, and particularly in establishing a warm welcome for
immigrants in receiving countries and working to heal the conditions to push people to migrate
in the first place.

This empathy should provoke people of goodwill to respond compassionately to the situations
financed by North American corporations in conjunction with the war on drugs, such as silver
mines and other extractive industries polluting the land and water and forcibly displacing
communities of people from their homes in places like Oaxaca, Mexico13; the violent southern
border of Mexico, in which migrants from Central America face torture, disappearance and
death in the attempts to journey to a safer life14; and the violent conditions faced by teens and
families in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua in gang-torn neighborhoods15,

10
Declaration on Judaism and Human Rights, http://hrusa.org/advocacy/community-faith/judaism1.shtm
11
UNHCR, Welcoming the Stranger: Affirmations for Faith Leaders,
http://www.unhcr.org/protection/hcdialogue%20/51b6de419/welcoming-stranger-affirmations-faith-leaders.html
12
Celia Deane-Drummond, Empathy and the Evolution of Compassion: From Deep History to Infused Virtue
[lecture]. Graduate Theological Union: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 26 April 2017.
13
Nicole Mance, Mining and Resistance in Oaxaca, Mexico. Committee on U.S./Latin American Relations
(CUSLAR), 23 February 2017.
14
Jacobo Garca, El muro empieza en el sur. (The Wall Begins in the South). El Pas, 7 February 2017.
15
Kate Linthicum, Also barred by Trumps executive order: These heavily vetted kids from Central America.
L.A. Times, 1 February 2017.
where one can see, one can hear, but one keeps quiet16 for fear of facing retribution for
reporting violent acts witnessed.

The Catholic Church has the position to speak powerfully about these issues, a long track
record of prophetic witness through encyclicals and lives of service; and a pastoral cycle that
leads the faithful into seeing situations, reflecting on them, casting a vision and acting. The
Church, with these tools and in collaboration with other people of faith and of good will, can
move the world toward greater nonviolence and peace. However, Catholic social teaching
sometimes seems like the Churchs best-kept secret.17 Disciples for peace, by starting with
the Principles for Waging Peace (see article on this website), form a foundation by which to
proclaim to the world, in word and in the service of their lives, the critical teachings of the
Church and of other human rights agents in the common human pursuit of justice for
immigrants, so that all people have the right to migrate, the right to not migrate, and a safe and
nurturing community wherever they choose to live in which to flourish in body, soul and
spirit, apart from the ravages of terror, violence and the otherization of xenophobia.

16
From the authors personal conversation with an immigrant from El Salvador, 27 May 2017.
17
This phrase even forms the title of a book: Catholic Social Teaching: Our Best Kept Secret, by Edward P.
DeBerri and James E. Hug (Orbis, 2003), an enormously useful resource which features concisely-outlined
summaries of key social documents of the Church.
WORKS CITED

I. Official Documents of the Catholic Church

Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, 1891.

Pope John XXIII, Encyclical, Pacem in Terris, 1963.
Pope John VI, Encyclical, Populorum Progressio, 1967.
CELAM (Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano), Medelln Document, 1968.
Pope John VI, Encyclical, Octogesima Adveniens, 1971.
CELAM (Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano), Puebla Document, 1978.
Pope St. John Paul II, Encyclical, Laborem Exercens, 1981.
Pope St. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in America, 1999.
Catholic Bishops of Central America, Pastoral Letter, To the People of God Journeying in
Central America, 2002.
Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States, Pastoral Letter, Strangers No Longer:
Together on the Journey of Hope, 2003.
CELAM (Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano), Aparecida Document, 2007.
Pope Francis, Encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium, 2013.
Pope Francis, Encyclical, Laudato Si, 2015.

II. UN and Interreligious Declarations

Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam,

http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/cairodeclaration.html (Accessed 18 May 2017).

Declaration on Judaism and Human Rights, http://hrusa.org/advocacy/community-

faith/judaism1.shtm (Accessed 25 May 2017).

UN Sustainable Development Goals, http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-

development-goals/ (Accessed 27 April 2017).

UN High Level Meeting on Refugees and Migrants, Closing Remarks,

http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/events/ga/documents/2016/closin
g/pga-71-closingremarks.pdf (Accessed 25 May 2017).
UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-
rights/index.html (Accessed 25 May 2017).

UNHCR, Welcoming the Stranger: Affirmations for Faith Leaders,

http://www.unhcr.org/protection/hcdialogue%20/51b6de419/welcoming-stranger-affirmations-
faith-leaders.html (Accessed 16 March 2017).

III. Other Works Cited

Bacon, David. The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration. Boston:
Beacon Press, 2013.

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Modern Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration.

https://cliniclegal.org/sites/default/files/modern_catholic_social_teaching_on_immigration_0.pdf
(Accessed 25 May 2017).

Deane-Drummond, Celia. Empathy and the Evolution of Compassion: From Deep History to
Infused Virtue [lecture]. Graduate Theological Union: Center for Theology and the Natural
Sciences, 26 April 2017.

DeBerri, Edward P., and Hug, James E. Catholic Social Teaching: Our Best Kept Secret.
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003.

Garca, Jacobo. El muro empieza en el sur. (The Wall Begins in the South). El Pas, 7
February 2017.

Linthicum, Kate. Also barred by Trumps executive order: These heavily vetted kids from
Central America. L.A. Times, 1 February 2017.

Mance, Nicole. Mining and Resistance in Oaxaca, Mexico. Committee on U.S./Latin

American Relations (CUSLAR), 23 February 2017.