According to Czerny, issues of pastoral interest for the Church are ensuring that migrants, refugees, displaced persons, asylum seekers, and victims of trafficking have the adequate resources and support needed to arrive safely and integrate into their new societies.
To this end, he pointed to the four-point "action plan" outlined by Pope Francis in his message for this year's World Day for Peace, titled "Migrants and Refugees: men and women in search of peace."
The four points – to welcome, protect, promote, and integrate – have been adopted by the Holy See as a response to the migration issue and have been widely promoted in the diplomatic scene.
By promoting and advancing the integral development of migrants and refugees, the Church is putting into action "what social doctrine has taught all along," he said, adding that by helping migrants and refugees integrate, the communities where they live become enriched.
In his comments to CNA, Czerny noted how many western governments in particular, not wanting to take in their share of the influx of migrants and refugees, try to solve the problem by providing financial support to countries of origin so citizens don't have to leave in the first place.
"We have been trying to promote – we the west, the well-developed countries, have in some ways been trying to promote development in the third world practically since World War Two," Czerny said. However, "the results are not very impressive."
"So if there is going to be a real effort to promote real integral sustainable development, God bless us, let's do it," he said, but cautioned that if this promise of "development" is in reality "a way of trying to trick and bribe people to stay home because we don't want them here, I think we should denounce it."
In his comments during the panel, Jaquemet outlined the process of drafting and discussing the compacts.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for the compact on refugees, Jaquemet said, is the issue of "solidarity," because there are many states who have taken in refugees for years, but who are now seeing a decrease in financial support.
"Those countries are not happy," he said, noting that western countries tend to be "quite reluctant to go into formal commitments in terms of burden sharing and solidarity."
Elise Harris was senior Rome correspondent for CNA from 2012 to 2018.