Go to Zenit's daily dispatch for today to find several items of interest, including B16's message on the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate (which is on Jewish-Christian relations). I'm especially drawn to something subtle he says in his message for World Day of Migrants & Refugees. Picking up a theme he expounded on when the Mexican bishops made their ad limina visit, the Pope talks about charity to migrants --but in his supremely balanced way, he says it's a mistake for charity to begin when the migrant worker shows up in a foreign country.
Speaking of the other category of migrants -- asylum seekers and refugees -- I wish to underline how the tendency is to stop at the question of their arrival while disregarding the reasons for which they left their native land. The Church sees this entire world of suffering and violence through the eyes of Jesus, who was moved with pity at the sight of the crowds wandering as sheep without a shepherd (cf. Matthew 9:36). Hope, courage, love and "creativity in charity" ("Novo Millennio Ineunte," No. 50) must inspire the necessary human and Christian efforts made to help these brothers and sisters in their suffering.
In other words, it's not just the host country that has a duty of charity. There's a concommitant obligation to try to solve the problems that drive people from their homes (hence his advice to the Mexican bishops that they take measures to fight economic corruption in their own country).
