National Post (National Edition)
‘The church can’t stay silent’
THE LOUDEST OPPONENT OF ITALY’S NEW ANTI-MIGRANT POLICY? THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
In a small church in central Italy, a priest told his congregation one recent Sunday morning that the motto of Italy’s highest-profile politician — “Italians First” — was antithetical to Christianity itself. Farther north, another parish priest said that supporters of the country’s new governing hard-line anti-migrant party “cannot call themselves Christian.” On the island of Sicily, an archbishop speaking in a public square took an even broader swipe, criticizing politicians who drive “their own miserable success” by exploiting fear about migrants.
“The church can’t stay silent,” the archbishop of Palermo, Corrado Lorefice, said during that speech, which marked a local holiday. “I can’t stay silent.”
As Italy’s migration politics swing to the right, the Catholic Church is responding with an oppositional roar.
Pope Francis, during the five years of his papacy, has spoken about the humanity and rights of migrants, cautioning about the anti-immigrant sentiment taking hold in parts of the developed world. But those warnings only recently turned into a clarion in the very backyard of the Roman Catholic Church, where one of the world’s most Catholic nations has ushered in a populist government that pledges to “stop the invasion” and tighten its doors.
In recent weeks, church leaders of all kinds — figures close to Francis and priests speaking on quiet Sundays — have struck back against what they describe as a xenophobic and fear-driven response to the wave of refugees and economic migrants who have reached Italian shores. Their voices have stood in relief against a political landscape where few others, even in Italian opposition parties, are delivering that message.
“It’s really unprecedented that the official voices of the Catholic Church are so squarely opposed” to an Italian government, said Massimo Faggioli, a Villanova University professor who studies Catholicism and European politics. “That hasn’t happened before. The Catholic Church is the opposition, basically.”
But some of those outspoken church leaders also describe a jolt of alarm, and say that the rise of anti-migrant movements here and in several other predominantly Catholic countries, including Poland and Austria, shows sharp divisions within the faith over how welcoming to be. The dominant figure in Italy’s new government is Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who swears by the gospel, sometimes brandishes rosary beads, and describes undocumented immigrants as a “tide of delinquents” whom he wants to send home.
“With all possible respect for the pastor of souls, instead of helping Africa’s poor come to Europe, my duty in the government is to first think of the millions of Italian poor,” Salvini recently wrote on Facebook, in a post responding to the archbishop’s speech in Palermo. “Am I wrong?”
Francis has not spoken explicitly about the shift in Italian politics, but this month he held a special mass for migrants, and two weeks later, in front of 25,000 people in St. Peter’s Square, asked nations to act “decisively and immediately” to prevent the “tragedy” of migrant deaths at sea. Francis and new Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte have not had a formal meeting, but Salvini has already met a high-profile church figure, Cardinal Raymond Burke, who is perhaps the highest-profile Vatican critic of the pope, and who has vowed to resist liberal changes.
In country after country, new nationalistic immigration policies have tested Catholic officials — and they have responded in different ways. Catholic leaders in the United States have been critical of President Donald Trump on migration, and America’s organizing body of bishops last month described as “immoral” the practice of separating children from their parents at the border.
In Italy, where more than 650,000 people have arrived by sea since 2014, resentment toward migrants has steadily built, particularly as other European countries resisted plans to more equitably share the burden of hosting migrants and processing their asylum claims. Salvini announced last month that he was closing Italian ports to humanitarian vessels, a move that has added to the chaos in the Mediterranean. He has since frequently said he is turning campaign promises into “action.” Polls suggest his party, the League, has become Italy’s most popular.
Some Catholic leaders take it as a sign that their messages haven’t come through.
“If there are Christians that feel an ease in saying no to reception, the church must ask itself a question,” Bishop Nunzio Galantino, the secretary general of the Italian Bishops’ Conference and a prelate who is close to Francis, said in an interview. “This means we have spoken about Jesus — performed ceremonies and done liturgies — but we surely haven’t created a mentality according to the gospel.”
Some Catholic groups have tried to play a more active role in softening attitudes toward migrants or calling attention to government policies.
One of the most notable statements about migration came from the powerful Italian Bishops’ Conference, which last week released a five-paragraph statement, illustrated on its website with the photo of a weak migrant who had been clinging to flotsam in the Mediterranean before her rescue. The statement didn’t specifically mention the Italian government, but it spoke of the need to “save our own humanity from vulgarity and barbarization” by saving lives, “beginning with the most exposed, humiliated and trampled upon.”
Then, this past Wednesday, a mainstream Catholic weekly magazine, Famiglia Cristiana, added its own match to the fire, released the cover illustration of its upcoming issue featuring a photo of Salvini and a Latin phrase associated with repelling the evil of Satan. The magazine’s headline said its opposition was “nothing personal,” but based on the gospel. Still, Salvini felt compelled to respond, and he released a statement saying that he didn’t think the comparison was fair.
“I am the least of the good Christians,” he said. “But I don’t think I deserve as much. I am reassured by the fact I receive on a daily basis the support of so many women and men of the church.”
WITH ALL POSSIBLE RESPECT FOR THE PASTOR OF SOULS, INSTEAD OF HELPING AFRICA’S POOR COME TO EUROPE, MY DUTY IN THE GOVERNMENT IS TO FIRST THINK OF THE MILLIONS OF ITALIAN POOR. — ITALY’S INTERIOR MINISTER, MATTEO SALVINI