The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, living in exile in Egypt to escape the fury of an evil king, are, for all times and all places, the models and protectors of every migrant, alien and refugee of whatever kind who, whether compelled by fear of persecution or by want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved parents and relatives, his close friends, and to seek a foreign soil.

For the almighty and most merciful God decreed that His only Son, "being made like unto men and appearing in the form of a man," should, together with His Immaculate Virgin Mother and His holy guardian Joseph, be in this type too of hardship and grief, the firstborn among many brethren, and precede them in it.

 In order that this example and these consoling thoughts would not grow dim but rather offer refugees and migrants a comfort in their trials, and foster Christian hope, the Church had to look after them with special care and unremitting aid. She sought to preserve intact in them the Faith of their fathers and a way of life that conformed to the moral law. She also had to contend strenuously with numerous difficulties, previously unknown and unforseeable, which were encountered abroad. Above all, it was necessary to combat the evil work of those perverse men who, alas, associated with migrants under the pretext of bringing material aid, but with the intent of damaging their souls.

The war that broke out in Palestine in 1948 brought new reasons for sadness and mourning. Innumerable refugees underwent horrible suffering, being forced to abandon their possessions and to wander throughout Libya, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and the district of Gaza. United in a common disaster, both the rich and the poor, the Christians and the non-Christians, offered a sad and morurnful spectacle.

Immediately, following the custom of the Catholic Church to provide assistance for the wretched and the abandoned, we sent as much aid as possible. As was customary in Apostolic times, we specifically established the Pontifical Mission for Palestine, which still relieves the want of Arab refugees through money collected from Catholics everywhere, but particularly through the aid of the special agency established by American bishops, called the Catholic Near East Welfare Association.

We have tried earnestly to produce in the minds of all people a sympathetic approach towards exiles and refugees who are our needier brothers. In fact, we have often spoken of their wretched lives, upheld their rights, and more than once appealed in their behalf to the generosity of all men and especially of Catholics. This we have done in radio addresses, in talks and discourses given as occasion arose, and in letters to archbishops and bishops.

We wrote, for example, to our Venerable Brothers, Archbishops, Bishops and Ordinaries of places in Germany:

In the present circuмstances, what seems most likely to stimulate and heighten your own charity and that of the German clergy is the necessity of assisting refugees by every resource and means of your ministry. We refer both to refugees from your land who live abroad in scattered regions and to alien refugees in Germany who, often deprived of their friends, their goods and their homes, are forced to lead a squalid and forlorn existence, usually in barracks outside the towns. May all good Germans and especially the priests and members of Catholic Action, turn their eyes and hearts toward these suffering neighbors and provide them with everything required by religion and charity.

Similarly, in our Encyclical Redemptoris Nostri on the Holy Places in Palestine, we lamented sadly:

Very many fugitives of all ages and every state of life, driven abroad by the disastrous war, cry pitifully to us. They live in exile, under guard, and exposed to disease and all manner of dangers.

We are not unaware of the great contributions of public bodies and private citizens to the relief of this stricken multitude; and we, in a continuation of those efforts of charity with which we began our Pontificate, have truly done all in our power to relieve the greatest needs of these millions.

But the condition of these exiles is indeed so critical, so unstable that it cannot lot much longer. Therefore, since it is our duty to urge all generous and well-minded souls to relieve as much as possible the wretchedness and want of these exiles, we most earnestly implore those in authority to do justice to all who have been driven far away from homes by the tempest of war and who long above all to live in quiet once more.

We have indeed made our gratitude known to our very dear brothers in the episcopate, as well as to priests and to citizens of every rank, to the public authorities as well to benevolent agencies that have aided refugees and emigrants in many different ways through their activities and advice.

Of these, we here recall with pleasure our letter of December 24, 1948, to the Chairman of the National Catholic Welfare Conference established by the bishops of the United States to promote the Catholic welfare; similarly, our personal letter of April 1951, which we sent to the Bishops of Australia, congratulating them on the 50th Anniversary of the Commonwealth.

Moreover, we have repeatedly addressed the Rulers of States, the heads of agencies, and all upright and cooperative men, urging upon them the need to consider and resolve the very serious problems of refugees and migrants, and, at the same time, to think of the heavy burdens which all peoples bear because of the war and the specific means that should be applied to alleviate the grave evils. We asked them also to consider how beneficial for humanity it would be if cooperative and joint efforts would relieve, promptly and effectively, the urgent needs of the sufferings, by harmonizing the requirements of justice with needs of charity. Relief alone can remedy, to a certain extent, many unjust social conditions. But we know that this is not sufficient. In the first place, there must be justice, which should prevail and be put into practice.

...

Likewise, from the first days of our Apostolic Office, we have directed our earnest attention to all our migrant sons, and we have been most anxious about their welfare, both temporal and eternal.

For this reason, on June 1, 1951 in a radio address on the fiftieth anniversary of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, we did speak of the right of people to migrate, which right is founded in the very nature of land.

Let us recall here a section of that address:

Our planet, with all its extent of oceans and was and lakes, with mountains and plains covered with eternal snows and ice, with great deserts and traceless lands, is not, at the same time, without habitable regions and living spaces now abandoned to wild natural vegetation and well suited to be cultivated by man to satisfy his needs and civil activities: and more than once, it is inevitable that some families migrating from one spot to another should go elsewhere in search of a new home-land.

Then,—according to the teaching of “Rerum Novarum,” —the right of the family to a living space is recognized. When this happens, migration attains its natural scope as experience often shows. We mean, the more favorable distribution of men on the earth's surface suitable to colonies of agricultural workers; that surface which God created and prepared for the use of all.

If the two parties, those who agree to leave their native land and those who agree to admit the newcomers, remain anxious to eliminate as far as possible all obstacles to the birth and growth of real confidence between the country of emigration and that of immigration, all those affected by such transference of people and places will profit by the transaction.

The families will receive a plot of ground which will be native for them in the true sense of the ward; the thickly inhabited countries will he relieved and their people will acquire new friends in foreign countries; and the States which receive the emigrants will acquire industrious citizens. In this receive the migrants will acquire industrious citizens. In this way, the nations which give and those which receive will both contribute to the increased welfare of man and the progress of human culture.

We again recalled these general principles of natural law the following year on Christmas Eve before the Sacred College of Cardinals.

We wrote specifically on this subject in a letter of December 24, 1948 to the American Bishops:

You know indeed how preoccupied we have been and with what anxiety we have followed those who have been forced by revolutions in their own countries, or by unemployment or hunger to leave their homes and live in foreign lands.

The natural law itself, no less than devotion to humanity, urges that ways of migration be opened to these people. For the Creator of the universe made all good things primarily for the good of all. Since land everywhere offers the possibility of supporting a large number of people, the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this.

Informed of our intentions, you recently strove for legislation to allow many refugees to enter your land. Through your persistence, a provident law was enacted, a law that we hope will be followed by others of broader scope. In addition, you have, with the aid of chosen men, cared for the emigrants as they left their homes and as they arrived in your land, thus admirably putting into practice the precept of priestly charity: "The priest is to injure no one; he will desire rather to aid all." (St. Ambrose, "De Officiis ministrorum," lib. 3, c. IX).

But no one who has heard our words, whether in our Christmas Address of 1945, or in our allocution of February 20, 1946 to the newly created cardinals, and in our address on the 25th of February to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, certainly, no one can be unaware of the grave concern gripping the heart of the worried father of all the faithful.

In these addresses and in our radio talks, we have condemned severely the ideas of the totalitarian and the imperialistic state, as well as that of exaggerated nationalism. On one hand, in fact they arbitrarily restrict the natural rights of people to migrate or to colonize while on the other hand, they compel entire populations to migrate into other lands, deporting inhabitants against their wills, disgracefully tearing individuals from their families, their homes and their countries.

In that address to the Diplomatic Corps, in the presence of a solemn gathering, we again affirmed our desire, often previously expressed, for a just and lasting peace. We pointed out another way of attaining this peace, a way that promotes friendly relations between nations; that is, to allow exiles and refugess to return finally to their homes and to allow those in need, whose own lands lack the necessities of life, to emigrate to other countries.

In our allocution to the cardinals on the feast of our patron, St. Eugene, on July 1, 1946, we again called upon the nations with more extensive territory and less numerous populations to open their borders to people from over-crowded countries. Of the latter, as is well known, Japan today happens to be the most overpopulated one.

We expressed the same view in our Christmas Address of 1948. It is better, we said, to facilitate the migration of families into those countries able to provide them with the essentials of life, than to send foodstuffs at great expense to refugee camps.

Therefore, when Senators from the United States, who were members of a Committee on Immigration, visited Rome a few years ago, we again urged them to try to administer as liberally as possible the overly restrictive provisions of their immigration laws.

Nor did we neglect to state and urge this same principle in an audience to which we were pleased to admit also eminent American Congressmen in charge of European refugee affairs l and who were likewise members of a Committee on Public Expenditures. We reaffirmed that stand very recently, on June 4th of this year, in our paternal address to our dear people of Brazil.

In an address of July 2, 1951, to the members of an International Catholic Congress for the Improvement of Rural Living Conditions, held in Rome, we said that there would be very great benefits from international regulations in favor of emigration and immigration.

...

Link