online rally for World Refugee Day Saturday June 20th 2020
Join us to find out why people including families with children, and unaccompanied young people, are taking to the seas, and the events happening on our closest borders, which encourage them to this desperate action. Listen to speakers and organisations from both sides of the Channel, Alexandra Limousin (L’Auberge des Migrants), Human Rights Observers, Kent Refugee Action Network Young Ambassadors, Marie Charlotte Fabié (Safe Passage International), Secours Catholique, and others.
Then zoom live to the seafront in Dover, to join Seeking Sanctuary and Rt Rev Dr Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover, for the Commemoration at the plaques for the migrants who died trying to reach the UK.
Sign up on Eventbrite to receive the click-on link a few days before the event. No need to add an app!
We stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the USA as they challenge the evil of racism and the brutal killing of George Floyd. As the US Bishops made clear: “we cannot turn a blind eye to these atrocities and yet still try to profess to respect every human life. We serve a God of love, mercy, and justice.”
Systemic racism is embedded in our own society. The disproportionate harm suffered by BAME people throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted profound inequalities, marginalisation and injustice here in the UK. The peaceful Black Lives Matter protests taking place in our towns and cities this week reflect the understandable anger that so many people feel about this.
As Catholics we recognise that racism is an evil which must be opposed; we all have a responsibility for actively promoting racial justice. Whenever we ignore racism or dismiss BAME people’s experience of it, we are complicit in violations of human dignity. We pray for God’s help to overcome racism in all its forms and that we might protect everyone who suffers its consequences. We are all made in God’s image.
Bishop Declan Lang – Lead Bishop for International Affairs
Bishop Paul McAleenan – Lead Bishop for Racial Justice
On 27th May, Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols added his voice to calls for a united response from government, faith leaders, charities, businesses and communities to find permanent homes for rough sleepers given temporary accommodation under the ‘Everyone In’ policy as the start of the coronavirus lockdown. The Cardinal said:
In 2020 no person should be faced with the indignity of being compelled to sleep on the street or the dangers and challenges associated with doing so. I commend and celebrate the work undertaken by our faith communities and civil society.
Only by working together can we find just and permanent solutions for the people who are homeless. I hope and pray that the new momentum found during this crisis can be sustained and will be successful.
The Global Catholic Climate Movement has produced a video showing the creative ways in which hundreds of thousands of Catholics on every continent marked their commemorations of Laudato Si’ Week for the fifth anniversary of the encyclical (16-24 May 2020.)
If you look closely you will even see a picture from the UK of a group at Farm Street Church, including our Justice & Peace chair, Fr Dominic Robinson SJ, announcing the divestment of a number of religious organisations from fossil fuels!
The real work has only just begun, though, and Pope Francis now wants us to spend a further year focusing on the message of Laudato Si’ that will help us unite around the international goal of protecting our common home. This will help us prepare to make a significant contribution to the UN Climate Conference COP26, which it has now been announced will take place 1-12 November 2021 in Glasgow.
The next step is to continue with all our individual actions, promises and goal-setting while looking towards the Season of Creation, 1 September – 4 October 2020 as the next significant time set aside for collaborative action.
We have been marking Laudato Si’ Week all this week (16-24 May) and the events will culminate in a chain of prayer around the world this coming Sunday at 12noon local time wherever you are. Do download the prayer card and join in or follow along with this beautiful British Sign Language video.
Volunteers in Trafalgar Square. Photo by Volunteer Team Leader Anthony Doran (foreground)
Caritas Westminster has assisted a group of parishes with the launch of a new refreshment station for the homeless in central London, located in front of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Since the beginning of May, the project has been providing snacks, soft drinks, toiletries and other essential items for homeless people living in the capital during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Colette Joyce, Coordinator of the Justice and Peace Commission at the Diocese of Westminster, has been representing Caritas Westminster and supporting the churches involved in the refreshment hub project since Easter. Colette has also been in regular contact with Westminster City Council who are authorising the project. In addition to Colette’s support, the project has also benefited from the expertise of Elizabeth Wills, Caritas Westminster Development Worker. Elizabeth joined the volunteers at the start of the project to ensure that safe social distancing measures were put in place from the outset, in order to protect all volunteers and service users.
Colette Joyce, Justice and Peace Co-ordinator at the Diocese of Westminster, said:
‘Westminster Council Rough Sleeping Team have been working miracles to get rough sleepers housed and supported in hotels but they have had to turn to the faith groups to provide the majority of the assistance to those still on the streets.
‘We have mobilised volunteers and donors to give generously of their time and resources and we will continue to do so for as long as necessary, but this shouldn’t be happening. The Council staff need to be given more resources, including more accommodation, to get people off the streets and into places where they can isolate properly to protect themselves and others from disease transmission. The government should also be ensuring that new cases of homelessness are prevented or picked up and resolved immediately.
‘As we mark the 5th anniversary of Laudato Si’, the many street homeless still making their way to Trafalgar Square for something to eat and drink is a stark reminder that we need to address the huge inequalities in our own society if we are to heed “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”.
‘We can create a “new normal” if we seize the opportunity presented to us. Our volunteers have responded with alacrity and generosity but also shock that this was necessary at all. For Westminster Catholics, our response on the ground compels us also to engage in a new civic conversation about future measures of “success” in society…’ More
Zoom gathering ‘Living Laudato Si’ on Monday 18th May 2020 Convened by Westminster Justice & Peace and CAFOD Westminster Photo by Ellen Teague
Ellen Teague reported for The Tablet on our ‘Living Laudato Si’ zoom evening:
“On Monday evening day Westminster Justice and Peace and CAFOD Westminster organised a zoom meeting of around 60 activists in the diocese who have been inspired by Laudato Si’. Livesimply parishes in Cockfosters, Hitchen, New Barnet and Pimlico described initiatives ranging from Walk to Church Sundays, becoming fair trade parishes, planting a garden for bees, to parishioners making a Laudato Si’ pledge to live more simply and placing livesimply tips weekly in the parish newsletter.
Fr Richard Nesbitt of White City Parish described a ‘Care for Creation’ fair held in a local park, and a pet blessing which included seven dogs, a cat and a pig! Clips from the Bishop’s Conference film resources of ‘Global Healing’ and ‘Global Caring’ were shown. Tony Sheen of CAFOD advertised the current CAFOD emergency appeal and a petition calling for the debts of the poorest countries to be cancelled as they cope with the coronavirus emergency.”
Read Ellen’s full round up of news from around the Dioceses for The Tablet
Volunteers setting up the Refreshment Hub in Trafalgar Square
In a hard-hitting sermon at Farm Street Church in Mayfair, central London, for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, 17th May 2020, parish priest Fr Dominic Robinson SJ, reflected on the current crisis in London seen in the light of the day’s Gospel reading.
Have you ever felt you’ve been left bereft? Maybe the break-up of a relationship or perhaps a bereavement. The experience of being orphaned, of being left, of losing an anchor in life, of losing a job. Over the last few weeks our volunteers working to feed the homeless in Trafalgar Square have certainly met so many who are completely lost, made newly homeless as a result of the economic impact of the current crisis. They are doing fantastic and vital work which would, if they had not stepped in, have led to catastrophic consequences on a grand scale. It was and is so necessary. And we are encountering daily those left all alone, those whose lives have been blown apart. But there will be, there are, others in similar positions these days. Being exposed to domestic abuse, to unbelievable family pressures, or simply isolation and loneliness. The experience of being left behind.
These last weeks of Eastertide represent a sacred time of transition for the Church, a time for prayer, for renewal, for taking stock of where our faith lies and how we live by it. And I suggest that this is indeed a time also when as a society as a whole we are also taking stock. So many I’ve chatted with in recent weeks bear this out as the current uncertain fearful reality of daily life. We, as were the first disciples, are anxious at this particular time of our lives at a time of so many uncertainties about when we will go “back” or “forward” to “the new normal”, the uncertain economic future, as so many have been hit by this time of crisis in terms of their livelihoods. So many people our volunteers in Trafalgar Square are meeting are new homeless – there are about 100 and more and more in our city and the number is increasing daily – they have simply lost their jobs, their homes, left bereft in a world simply trying to survive and not be infected. Amid all the political battles over what is and what isn’t being done on this issue this is a human crisis and so it impinges on all of us including, especially the Christian community. And it must challenge us as a society as a whole to be accountable for those still on our streets, that is to ask why this is the case in the middle of a city as wealthy as ours, a city which rightly prides itself on welcome, hospitality, care for the most vulnerable through welfare. It would be a terrible blot on our society if we simply ignored it. What an appalling society it would be that leaves human being made in God’s image to go hungry on our streets in a time of pandemic. How as Christians and Catholics do we take our place in this society right now at this time of transition and great need? With such a lack of clarity perhaps about the place of institutional religion in daily life and our life as society, broken and in need of renewal, in need of an injection of humanity, integrity, civility.
Bereft, left behind by society, all alone. This was the experience of the disciples also in this Sunday’s Gospel. Jesus is about to leave his disciples behind. Yet he is telling them not to be afraid. He invites them to trust in the power of love, to a greater trust indeed than they have ever needed. God has shown his love for us in his victory over death. The event, the moment, the reality of the cross is in a sense behind us. It is history. The tomb, Easter morning, the resurrection appearances. Suspended in time. And now God will show us the depth of his love in how he will be with us not just at a point in time suspended for ever but now for all time. The Father will send the Holy Spirit into the Church. And the Holy Spirit will help us to know that love, will remind us who are left behind of everything the Lord taught us. Will in fact teach us how to live out his mission of love in the world. The call to a radical loving, a radical generosity, even, especially at a time of such crisis, tragedy, panic, fear, when it seems we have been forsaken and left bereft. More…
Read the Encyclical in full on the Vatican Website – Laudato Si’ 2015
Today marks the beginning of Laudato Si’ Week, a time of refection and activity to mark the 5th anniversary since the publication of Pope Francis’ encyclical in 2015.
In this time of pandemic, we have become ever more aware of the fragility of our lives and the fragility of our planet. We have not done enough in the last five years to halt the destruction of the ecosystem that sustains us and so the Pope has renewed his urgent call to the Faithful to return to this document and other sources to step up our efforts to protect and preserve our environment. All life on earth depends on the decisions we make in the next few years about how we want to relate to the natural world.
The central insight of Pope Francis is that to end our injustice to the planet, we must end injustices among ourselves:
“Today … we have to realise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” (LS 49)
To start the week we warmly encourage you to return to the text, pick up a copy of Laudato Si’ or read it online and take its message to heart.
Diocese of Westminster Justice and Peace Commission 