Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians

Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians

Via dell’Ateneo Salesiano 81

00139 Rome

Rome 14 January 2007

Objective of the letter: Campaign in favor of the International Convention on the protection of the rights of migrant workers and their families.

To the attention of the Mission ad gentes coordinators and/or the other coordinators of the Provincial Team.

For the information of the Provincials or Superiors of the pre-provinces.

Dearest,

The family spirit constitutes an essential characteristic of our living and working together, an appropriate way of realizing our charism. It is a precious and ever timely heritage left to us by Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello.

The theme of the Family has recently been the object of reflection and of deepening on the part of the church Magisterium as well as of the Salesian Family. The Rector Major’s strenna of 2006, invited us to give special attention to the family, which is the cradle of life and of love and the place of primary humanization.

For the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, January 14, 2007, Benedict XVI’s message proposes the Holy Family as the icon of all families and invites us to reflect on the condition of migrant families. Moreover, the Pope encourages the ratification of international instruments and, in a special way, he cites the International Convention for the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and family members.[1]

The Campaign that we are proposing for this Convention, from the viewpoint of the Plan for a Common Home in the diversity of peoples, intends to launch or re-enforce processes of integration and promote public opinion for a new opening in the inter-cultural journey so that migrant families have a real possibility of insertion and participation in a society that is ever more united and humane.

This Campaign desires to affect the heights but starting at the grassroots level with the normal rapports of daily life, through a deepened knowledge of this international instrument promoted by the UN in order to create in each country, the necessary conditions that guarantee the dignity of migrant persons and, in this case, of their families.

Many countries have not as yet ratified this Convention. But even if they have done so, it is necessary to orient public opinion so that the rights of migrant families are guaranteed by the administrative norms of each State.

We hold that from an educational perspective promoting these campaigns is a concrete way to educate others and ourselves to exercise a citizenship that is united and responsible for the common good and give our educational proposal a political and social valence.

All this will be possible if, motivated by the Message of the Holy Father for the World day of Migrants and Refugees of 2007, the coordinators for the Mission ad Gentes and/or the other coordinators of the Provincial Team, in collaboration and in synergy with the laity and the migrant families themselves who live near them or form part of the educative community, accompany this Campaign, and through networking, actualize the objectives of this proposal.

I conclude this letter by once again recalling the Message of the World Day for Migrants and Refugees of 2007, “the charity of Christ urges us”.

With my affection and prayer,

Sr. Ciri Hernández

[1]NB: The Campaign is communicated to the Institute on the website, to the Mission ad Gentes coordinators by e-mail and to the Provincials by mail.