Immigration Quotes from the Church
by CAPP-USA
Here are 10 quotes about immigration from the Church.
These are 10 Powerful Quotes about Immigration
All through modern Catholic social teaching, the Church has called for a balance between the rights of migrants seeking better lives, and the rights of nations, enriched by migrants, that must regulate the flow outwards and inwards for the common good.
These quotes reflect the Catholic Church’s commitment to advocating for the rights and dignity of immigrants and their call for compassion and justice in addressing issues related to migration.
- “The Church… recognizes the right of all men to migrate to other countries and to seek conditions worthy of human life for themselves and for their families.” (Gaudium et Spes, 65)
- “Certainly, the exercise of such a right [to emigrate] is to be regulated, because practicing it indiscriminately may do harm and be detrimental to the common good of the community that receives the migrant.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 3)
- “Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2241)
- “The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2241)
- “Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity. They are children, women, and men who leave or are forced to leave their homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having, but above all for being more.” (Pope Francis)
- “It is therefore the duty of State officials to accept such immigrants and—so far as the good of their own community, rightly understood, permits—to further the aims of those who may wish to become members of a new society.” (Pope St. John XXIII, 106)
- “Certainly every state has the right to regulate migration and to enact policies dictated by the general requirements of the common good, albeit always in safeguarding respect for the dignity of each human person.” (Pope Benedict XVI)
- “The challenge is to combine the welcome due to every human being, especially when in need, with a reckoning of what is necessary for both the local inhabitants and the new arrivals to live a dignified and peaceful life.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 13)
- “Immigrants, if they are helped to integrate, are a blessing, a source of enrichment and new gift that encourages a society to grow”. (Pope Francis, 135)
- “Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance.” (Pope Benedict XVI, 62)
