The Roman Catholic Bishop responsible for refugees, Paul Mcaleenan, has responded to this week’s riots in cities in the UK by condemning intimidation by the rioters and praising the charities and volunteers who have supported the families and businesses that were targeted.
“Today, and always”, he said, “we need to continue to pray, work and stand together for peace in our country. The actions of the few involved in violence stands in stark contrast to the work of charities, church groups and volunteers who tirelessly extend the hand of welcome to migrants in acts of solidarity.
“We hope and pray that they will re-double their efforts so that we can rebuild communities after the terrible events of the last few days.”
In the same vein, the Archbishop of Canterbury pleaded for non-violent protests: “peaceful protest will have ten thousand times the impact of violence”, he said.
The Catholic Herald´s Editorial went on: “The kind of rhetoric that dehumanises other people is at odds with Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan, which Jesus used to illustrate the injunction to love our neighbour; our neighbour, he said, was pre-eminently those we might feel alienated from, as Jews (of Jesus’ day) felt about the Samaritans.
“The police must restore order to the streets and the rioters must be punished…But then the political class and the public, including our readers, must engage in reflection on what this unrest tells us about ourselves”.
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Photo: Southport Riot 2024. Attribution: By StreetMic LiveStream, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151177179