The annual celebration of World Refugee Day takes place on 20 June.
Every minute 20 people leave everything behind to escape war, persecution or terror (UN figures). Nearly 80 million women, children, and men around the world have been forced from their homes as refugees or internally displaced people. Ten million of these people fled in the past year alone.
Those numbers are very difficult to comprehend.
Pope Frances has challenged us that all persons, including migrants, refugees and the vulnerable ‘need to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated.’ If we do that ‘We will promote the integral human development of all people. We will also help the world community to come closer to the goals of sustainable development that it has set for itself and that, lacking such an approach, will prove difficult to achieve.’
Let us take up the challenge
