Kansas City, Mo., Feb 2, 2006 / 22:00 pm
In his latest column, Kansas City, Kansas Archbishop Joseph Naumann weighed in on the volatile national immigration debate, saying that Scripture exhorts faithful to welcome the stranger and the alien, not as an option--but as a responsibility.
The Archbishop wrote in regard to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop’s Justice for Immigrants Campaign which advocates comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S.
Citing a joint pastoral letter drafted by the Bishops of the U.S. and Mexico in 2000 called, “Strangers No Longer: Together On a Journey of Hope,” Archbishop Naumann said that the Biblical Abraham himself as well as his descendents “knew what it was like to be strangers in a strange land.”
The document points out that “The key events in the history of the Chosen People of enslavement by the Egyptians and of liberation by God led to the commandments regarding strangers (Ex 23: 9; Lv 19: 33).”