Migrants need help of 'new evangelization' to counter secularizing trend, Pope writes
October 19, 2011
The Vatican has released the message of Pope Benedict XVI for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees in 2012, entitled “Migrations and the New Evangelization.”
The World Day of Migrants and Refugees will be observed on January 15. The papal message, released on October 19, calls for “a fresh impetus and new approaches to the work of evangelization in a world in which the breaking down of frontiers and the new processes of globalization are bringing people and peoples even closer.”
In the message, Pope Benedict applies the theme of the “new evangelization”—which has been the main focus of his preaching in recent weeks—to the phenomenon on migration. He notes that the world has seen “an unprecedented mingling of persons and peoples,” which brings with it a number of different problems. Among them, the Pope notes, is the power of secularization. “Our time is marked by endeavors to efface God and the Church's teaching from the horizon of life,” he writes, “while doubt, skepticism, and indifference are creeping in, seeking to eliminate all the social and symbolic visibility of the Christian faith.”
The “new evangelization” is needed, then, to help migrants “keep their faith firm even when they are deprived of the cultural support that existed in their country of origin,” the Pope says.
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