The hope of the Kingdom of God is not to be identified with a nation or a political system. The Secretary of the Dicastery on migration and populism

"The hope of the Kingdom of God is not be identified with a nation or with a political system. The realization of the Kingdom remains a horizon that invites to conversion by building, day by day, a society of justice and law, in which each child of God is welcomed, nominated and protected ". This is a passage from the intervention of Msgr. Bruno-Marie Duffé, Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, to the Conference on the theme Global Migrations and New Nationalisms. The Church facing xenophobia, populism, racism, which was held yesterday, 8 February, at the University College of Santa Caterina da Siena in Pavia, Italy.

Starting from a psychological and social analysis of the "fear" of the other, especially of migrants, who "push us to rethink the boundaries we have built with many difficulties over the years, of generations, of wars and crises". "The fear of having to give a little of ourselves, or the fear of not living what is decisive for success", Msgr. Duffè recalls that "we are all fundamentally 'migrants ', and life is a search for the source", physical and symbolic one.

"The meeting with the other - he explains - with the migrant stranger in particular, interrogates and redefines in a necessary way the image that we have built in our present and future. The other is always the one who reverses our predictions. History will be different because we have to write it together with the one who came".

Faced with this - continues the Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, "it seems that the experience of contemporary migrations does not belong to anyone".

In this scenario, therefore, "The Church is primarly listening, and, based on listening, it can say to a person - and perhaps to restless people, with expectation, migrants or settled, asylum seekers or guardians of the door - 'I believe with you; I believe in you'". The principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church, in fact, "open a space for encounter and avoid the exploitation of evangelical values", which are the "inalienable dignity of the human person, which translates into respect for the fundamental rights of every living being; subsidiarity or shared exercise of responsibility; solidarity or reciprocal gratitude; the Common Good or Good of the community; the primary choice of closeness to the poorest, the beloved of God". In the belief that "every person carries within himself the sign of the love of God; every human responsibility is exercised in reciprocity and complementarity; every community grows in humanity and hope when the most fragile are loved, in the manner of God himself, that is unconditionally ".

By relating the theme of the welcoming of the other with the urgency of peace, Msgr. Duffè finally quotes Pope Francis in his Message for the 52nd World Day of Peace, of January 1st: "Peace is based on respect for each person, whatever his or her background, on respect for the law and the common good, on respect for the environment entrusted to our care and for the richness of the moral tradition inherited from past generations.».