Comunità Sant’Egidio, Associazione Centro Astalli, Federazione Chiese Evangeliche in Italia, Fondazione Migrantes, Caritas italiana, ACLI

To die for hope

Ecumenical Prayer in memory of victims of journeys towards Europe

presided over by Mgr. Antonio Maria Vegliò
Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People

Basilica Santa Maria in Trastevere

Rome, 25 June 2009
6.00 pm

On the occasion of the 2009 World Day of the Refugee, the ACLI (Italian Workers' Catholic Association), Associazione Centro Astalli, Italian Caritas, Community of Sant'Egidio, Federation of the Evangelical Churches of Italy, Foundation Migrantes, for the third consecutive year, organize an ecumenical vigil prayer in memory of the victims of the journeys towards Europe in which will take part communities and associations of immigrants, refugees and organizations of voluntary service.

Reliable data point out that in the first four months of 2009 the dead in the Channel of Sicily were 339.  In all 2008, there had been 642. From 1988 the dead documented by the international press were 14,661, among which 6,327 missing. Praying for these men and these women means to light the floodlights on a situation that gets every day worse.
Tragically too little are those who succeed to arrive the goal: a lot, no one knows how many, do not even reach the north african coasts as they die in the long crossing of the desert. Others find the death in that strip of sea that divides Africa from Europe. They are men and women escaping from hunger, from war, from the persecutions for which in many parts of the world people still dies. They are human beings so despaired to put at risk their same life to get on the thresholds of salvation that Europe represents for them and their sons.
The news of the last weeks on the rejections in sea decided by the Italian government towards Libya are reason of serious concern. Hundreds of persons among which women and children, besides having put at risk life in a journey at the limit of their strength, are accompanied - against the main rules of the international right and of the sea - in a country that does not guarantee the respect of the fundamental human rights. Unfortunately there are no more news about many of them.

To forget, to dismiss, to resign ourselves to the "normality" of the tragedies of immigration means to leave to die once again the victims in journey towards Europe:  "The victims of hope".