Pensar, discernir y gestar un mundo más fraterno: la respuesta de la Iglesia Católica frente al drama de los migrantes y refugiados

Confronted with the plight of millions of migrants, refugees, and displaced people worldwide, this chapter seeks to offer a response grounded in Revelation, Tradition, and the Magisterium as expressed in Catholic social teaching and other Papal documents and addresses. After acknowledging the significance of the Church’s reflection on social issues and distinguishing its theological principles from their particular hermeneutical applications, the article examines the concrete reality of migrants and refugees, seeking to clarify the dimension and scale of this social issue. Beginning with the icon of the Good Samaritan, the author presents mercy as a foundational category that generates a response from the very heart of the Gospel—a response that calls for a more open and fraternal world, as well as for specific courses of action proposed by the Church. Recognizing that any transformation of an unjust reality presupposes a change in the human heart, the article concludes by underscoring the urgency of personal and communitarian conversion as a necessary condition for the emergence of this new world. The proposal for “a more fraternal world” thus entails a certain eschatological tension—an “already, but not yet.”