If there is an issue that is most politically acrimonious and controversial, it is migration. The political spectrum of most countries in Europe and the US has been rocked beyond imagination by the polarisation that the issue has created. The far right is on a meteoric rise in several countries. Centrist parties had to take a tougher stand on migration to avoid the risk of being wiped out of the political map.
There are those who think that a religious leader should keep away from this politically divisive issue so as not to alienate believers who affirm anti-migrant positions. Providentially, Pope Francis, who is now undergoing treatment at the Gemelli Hospital, is not one of them.
Unfortunately, this vital contribution of his pontificate, continually emphasised by him, is not given the importance it deserves. While in hospital, for example, the Vatican published his message for Lent, wherein he exhorts Catholics to carry out an examination of conscience in order to correct their attitude towards migrants. He also proposes an action that can help in this examination.
“It would be a good Lenten exercise for us to compare our daily life with that of some migrant or foreigner, in order to learn how to sympathise with their experiences and in this way discover what God is asking of us.”
The pope released this message notwithstanding the negative backlash he was subjected to by American conservative Catholics, who are still fuming at the letter he had sent a few days earlier to the US bishops.
In this letter, Francis strongly denounced Trump’s dehumanising deportation policies, saying that the “rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgement and express its disagreement”. In the same letter, the pope also took a swipe at the ‘Catholic’ vice president of the US, who thinks he can lecture the pope about Church teaching.
The migrants’ issue is both a moral issue as it is a political one. That is why Francis chose to highlight it from the very beginning of his pontificate.
His first visit out of Rome after becoming pope was to Lampedusa, the port of call for many migrants. His poignant homily is a sort of 21st-century, albeit harsher, version of Zola’s J’accuse open letter to the French president in 1898, denouncing a flagrant injustice.
As if making enemies because of this stand was not enough, Francis’s prophetic pontificate also championed the defence of the poor and the denunciation of corruption as part of his view of a just political system. In Buenos Aires, he had witnessed first-hand the disastrous effect of political corruption and economic inequality on the lives of ordinary people.
In season and out of season, he condemned poverty as a scandal and lambasted the capitalist model of trickle-down economics as unjust.
Pope Francis strongly denounced Trump’s dehumanising deportation policies- Fr Joe Borg
In his Apostolic letter The Joy of the Gospel, he warned that “the culture of prosperity deadens us”, adding:
“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”
In March of 2015, Pope Francis visited Scampia, an impoverished neighbourhood close to Naples. He decried corruption: “Corruption is a dirty thing! If we find a dead animal and it is corrupted, it is ugly. But it also ‘stinks’, corruption ‘stinks’! A corrupt society stinks! A Christian who allows corruption to enter is not Christian, they stink! Got it?”
During his 2024 address at the 50th annual Social Week of Catholics in Trieste, Italy, Pope Francis called on Catholics to actively share their faith in the public sphere.
In 2015, he told members of Italy’s Christian Life Community and the Student Missionary League that Catholics must get involved in politics.
“Do I, as a Catholic, watch from my balcony? No, you cannot watch from the balcony. Get right in there!”
Catholics should get involved even if politics may be ‘dirty’, frustrating and fraught with failure. Early in his pontificate, in The Joy of the Gospel (2013), Pope Francis wrote: “Politics, though often denigrated, remains a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity.”
In 2015, in Laudato Si, he insisted on the need for healthy politics.
And in Fratelli Tutti (2020) – which many describe as his political manifesto – he devoted a whole chapter titled A Better Kind of Politics.
This chapter is a must-read for every Maltese Catholic during Lent, whether they are directly involved in politics or indirectly as conscientious citizens who contribute to the best of their ability besides voting.
It will help Maltese Catholics realise that political activism is an important dimension of a Catholic’s mission to evangelise the world. Politics is an essential dimension of Christian love. According to the Church’s social teaching, it is one of the highest forms of charity, because it seeks the common good; works for the inclusion of everyone, including refugees and migrants; fights corruption; and struggles for the building of a just economic system that abolishes poverty.
There are Maltese Catholics who strive to avoid their duty to contribute by saying that politics is a “distasteful word, often due to the mistakes, corruption, and inefficiency of some politicians” (Fratelli Tutti 176).
However, as the pope hypothetically asks: “Yet, can our world function without politics? Can there be an effective process of growth towards universal fraternity and social peace without a sound political life?” [FT 157].
Lent is the time to shake such Catholics from their lethargy and comfort zone and take heed of Pope Francis’s heartfelt appeal:
“Let us take an active part in renewing and supporting our troubled societies… Others may continue to view politics or the economy as an arena for their own power plays. For our part, let us foster what is good and place ourselves at its service” (FT 77).