Travellers’ Mass Westminster Cathedral 2018 – image ICN/JS
The Catholic Church has warned that last night’s Channel 4 Dispatches The Truth About Traveller Crime, risks stoking racism against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.
Fr Dan Mason, National Catholic Chaplain for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers said: “Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities make a valuable contribution to our society, yet face extraordinary levels of racism and discrimination. Almost every man, woman and child has suffered some form of hate speech or hate crime.”
Channel 4’s programme used sensationalist language, selective examples and dubious statistics which will only reinforce this prejudice. Such broadcasts would be dangerous and irresponsible at the best of times. Coming amid a national crisis, and a pandemic that’s hitting minority communities so hard, is particularly unacceptable.
Pope Paul VI reminded us that our GRT sisters and brothers are at the heart of the Church. We will continue to stand in solidarity with them.”
Earlier this month the Catholic Church in England and Wales called for solidarity with GRT communities during the COVID-19 pandemic: See: ICN 1 April 2020 COVID-19: Call for solidarity with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communitieswww.indcatholicnews.com/news/39258
In April, Caritas Westminster sent £31,000 in emergency food vouchers to schools and parishes who will distribute them to those most in need during the Covid-19 pandemic. You can support this work by donating to the Cardinal’s Lenten Appeal which has been extended to address the on-going crisis:
Here are some things we can do to demonstrate our love for our earth:
1. Develop an environmental spirituality.
2. Assess our lifestyle and consumption. Practice these four ‘Rs’ for sustainable living: Reuse, recycle, reduce, restore.
3. Prevent pollution, reduce our carbon footprint, and become advocates for God’s Creation.
4. Promote sound environmental management practices e.g. energy efficiency, water conservation, waste avoidance, composting, using environmentally responsible products, and car-pooling.
Leela Ramdeen is Chair of the Catholic Commission for Social Justice in the Archdiocese of Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, (CCSJ) and Director of CREDI
It only takes a short amount of your time but really does make a difference.
Colette Joyce, Justice and Peace Co-ordinator, says: “In these days of crisis, a great number of online petitions have been pouring into the Commission inbox and I have been signing and promoting as many as possible to beg for social change at home and abroad, but found it isn’t easy to keep current when policy is changing on an almost daily basis. We strongly encourage people to continue to put immediate pressure on governments to make urgent and essential policy improvements, but we decided we needed to look at the big picture as well, to see what large-scale changes need to be made in the longer term to move us away from daily fire-fighting.
The COVID19 pandemic is laying bare the staggering inequalities between human beings and the huge injustices that maintain our structurally unfair societies. At the same time, we have discovered that despite, maybe even because of lockdown, there is an increasing capacity for universal co-operation. Now is the time to harness it for the greater good!”
Fr Dominic Robinson, SJ, Justice and Peace Chair, writes: “Pope Francis is urging us to recognise how on a global scale now is the time to make choices which will build a new more human future. The current global crisis requires us to put aside our past divisions and to work together for the health of the whole human race. This requires us to cancel the debt of the poorer nations and to put an end to conflicts between peoples. It is our hope that this radical call will be heeded by those who have the power to bring this about.”
Each year, near to the Feast of St Joseph the Worker, the migrant communities of Brentwood, Southwark and Westminster Dioceses gather for a Mass that is full of song, vibrant energy and great joy.
The Mass should have taken place in Forest Gate this year, but as we cannot gather, we will celebrate by Livestream Mass at 10.30am on Saturday 2nd May.
The Mass will be streamed live on the Instagram by the Brentwood Youth Service. Follow these steps to join in:
First we pause… we stop… so that we can think…and judge properly… what will keep us safe from harm?
Justice & Peace in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster also welcomes this pause of the government’s Integrated Review and urges them to listen to the voices of peace campaigners before they establish new national priorities for Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.
Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) and Pax Christi are among the organisations approving this decision and urging the government to change track completely. Read full report on Independent Catholic News
“We are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other. On this boat… are all of us. Just like those disciples … so we too have realized that we cannot go on thinking of ourselves, but only together can we do this.” Pope Francis, 27 March 2020
Responding to the words of Pope Francis, Pax Christi International has joined the United Nations in calling for a Global Ceasefire. More…
An international peace-building process is now in place to arrange truces in every conflict zone.
A notable milestone was reached on 9th April 2020 when Pax Christi and 59 other organisations issued a statement in response to the announcement of a temporary ceasefire in Yemen. The cessation of hostilities is only a first step and the statement called for an immediate end to restrictions and interference to humanitarian aid to provide urgent medical care and measures to prevent the spread of COVID19.
In his Easter message the Pope challenged all peoples to ban indifference, self-centredness, division and forgetfulness during this time of Covid-19 – and to spread the “contagion” of hope.
Not a time for indifference
This is not a time for indifference, said the Pope, “because the whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic”. He prayed that the risen Jesus may grant hope “to all the poor, to those living on the peripheries, to refugees and the homeless”. Pope Francis also called for the relaxation of international sanctions and for “the reduction, if not the forgiveness, of the debt burdening the balance sheets of the poorest nations”.
Not a time for self-centredness
This is not a time for self-centredness, continued Pope Francis, because “the challenge we are facing is shared by all”. Europe, in particular, was able “to overcome the rivalries of the past” following the Second World War, “thanks to a concrete spirit of solidarity”. It is urgent “these rivalries do not regain force”, the Pope continued. We all need to recognize ourselves “as part of a single family and support one another”. Selfishly pursuing particular interests risks “damaging the peaceful coexistence and development of future generations”, he added.
Not a time for division
This is not a time for division, said the Pope, as he appealed for “an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world”. Criticizing the vast amounts of money spent on the arms trade, Pope Francis called for a solution to the ongoing conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon. He said he hoped Israelis and Palestinians might resume dialogue, that the situation in eastern Ukraine might be resolved, and that “terrorist attacks carried out against so many innocent people in different African countries may come to an end”.
Not a time for forgetfulness
This is not a time for forgetfulness, continued Pope Francis, referring to the humanitarian crises being faced in Asia and Africa. He prayed for refugees and migrants “living in unbearable conditions, especially in Libya and on the border between Greece and Turkey”. The Pope prayed also that solutions may be found in Venezuela, allowing “international assistance to a population suffering from the grave political, socio-economic and health situation” there.
Christ dispels the darkness of suffering
“Indifference, self-centredness, division and forgetfulness are not words we want to hear at this time”, said the Pope. These words “seem to prevail when fear and death overwhelm us”, and we want to ban them forever, he added.
Pope Francis concluded his Urbi et Orbi message with a prayer: “May Christ, who has already defeated death and opened for us the way to eternal salvation, dispel the darkness of our suffering humanity and lead us into the light of His glorious day. A day that knows no end”.
They just stood, Still, With their spice-filled baskets, Staring, horrified, Eyes out into the deep emptiness Of the garden tomb, (Tombs hold their dead) Wits frozen, Feet rooted to the ground; The sheer incongruence of it all, The terror of impossibility! Memories of promise, Heard but not believed, Hung in the morning sun. What if it were true? What would the future be?
Update from Barbara Kentish Westminster Justice & Peace Commission lead on Migrants and Refugees:
Awaited for over a week, the Préfecture of Pas de Calais has finally designated six centres in the region to house migrants, estimated between 8-1200, living rough in the surrounding dunes and woods of Calais. On Friday, 3 April, around 100 were taken by bus to a requisitioned holiday centre in Merlimont, not far from the Normandy beaches. At the moment transfer is voluntary, with enforcement considered only as a last resort, the operation being envisaged to last over two weeks. In the centres, all in the Pas de Calais area, migrants will be subject to the same Covid 19 regulations as the rest of the country. Already two had tested positive for the illness earlier in the week, and were moved to flats designated for isolated care.
With 400 places identified so far, and a staggered process of transfer, Juliette Delaplace of Secours Catholique protested that this was not sufficient: “At this rate people will only be sheltered 12 days from now, when we have already been at stage 3 of the coronavirus epidemic for three weeks. It completely ignores the emergency, and sanitary needs. This neglect of exiled people on the North coast is inexplicable.”
The State-led operation aims to take control, for humanitarian reasons, of a ‘population without shelter’, whose presence around the outskirts of Calais poses ‘serious public health problems and challenges to the peace’. It is in the ‘national framework of public isolating policy’ according to the regional government.
Other NGOs, such as Amnesty International, Emmaus, Cimade and Doctors without Borders are also concerned. NGOs have been prohibited from circulating amongst the encampments so that hunger and lack of supplies has been reported. In Grande Synthe, Dunkirk, measures are also expected, but at the moment some voluntary agencies have managed to deliver supplies.
Diocese of Westminster Justice and Peace Commission 