Good Samaritans? The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) in Migration, Asylum, and Religious Freedom Debates from the 1980s to the 2000s

Debates surrounding migration, asylum, and diversity in Europe have provoked outpourings of both solidarity and opposition from across the political and popular spectra of society, with cultural anxieties expressed surrounding the incompatibility of (particularly Muslim) migrants with the apparently Christian-rooted common values of the European integration process. Despite this, the voices of Christian representatives, particularly at the institutional level, have rarely been consulted. This article explores the positions taken on migration, asylum, and religious pluralism by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), a Roman Catholic advocacy organization working at the European institutional level. It charts the history of Catholic international organisations and the post-Vatican II reconfiguration of the Church around these subjects, before outlining the rhetorical stances and tangible formations of COMECE’s work, outlining its theological imperatives and religious authority, and nuancing the degree of support and opposition Catholic advocacy on these subjects has faced at the levels of the European institutional arena.