Vatican City, Nov 28, 2007 / 10:22 am
Today, Pope Benedict XVI’s message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees which will be celebrated on January 13, was made public. In it he raised the plight of young migrants who are torn between two cultures in the lands they immigrate to.
The theme of the 94th celebration, “invites us this year to reflect in particular on young migrants” stated the Holy Father. “The vast globalization process underway around the world brings a need for mobility, which also induces many young people to emigrate and live far from their families and their countries. The result is that many times the young people endowed with the best intellectual resources leave their countries of origin, while in the countries that receive the migrants, laws are in force that make their actual insertion difficult.”
"For the young migrants,” he continued, “the problems of the so-called 'difficulty of dual belonging' seem to be felt in a particular way: on the one hand, they feel a strong need not to lose their culture of origin, while on the other, the understandable desire emerges in them to be inserted organically into the society that receives them, but without this implying a complete assimilation and the resulting loss of their ancestral traditions.”
Cardinal Martino, president of the Pontifical Council affirmed this during the presentation saying, “Young migrants often find themselves alone, in a no- man's-land halfway between two cultures.” This causes them “to live in a situation of great uncertainty that prevents them from conceiving a feasible project for their future and increases the factors that lead to marginalization, opening the doors to criminality, prostitution, alcohol, drugs and larceny.”