A great team PERTH, WA: June 21, 1990
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Refugee Week
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doors Because of the urgency of the situation, Australia must be prepared to open its doors to more refugees, says Bishop Hickey of Geraldton who is chairman of the Australian Bishops' Committee for Social Welfare. "We must also be prepared to become a country of first asylum," he said. "We should not expect to avoid our responsibilities and enjoy the luxury of picking and choosing whom we like from
When 700 catechists turned up at St Mary's Cathedral last week for the annual commissioning ceremony it was a chance for Archbishop Foley to shake hands with the likes of Gwen Smith of Wanneroo who has been a catechist for 34 years and whose great grandfather Bernard established Perth's pioneer Catholic family. See page 11
the holding camps." Speaking at a public meeting in Geraldton during Refugee Week Bishop Hickey said we must examine closely the division of the world into nations that take too absolute a view of their sovereignty. "This world is home for us all," he said. "It is not right for us to deny a home for the homeless." He said that many of the arguments against more refugees such as strain on the economy, higher unemployment
and the sustainable population arguments, betrayed, on closer examination, the ugly face of xenophobia. "It is claimed that population grows exponentially while feed resources grow only arithmetically, so the Malthusian argument goes," he said. "If that is true, why is it that when we take our annual immigration figures we see that Australia's population is declining, our birthrate not even at replacement levels.
"People create jobs, they do not take them away," he said. "Immigration has been an outstanding success in Australia, so it is surprising that descendants of immigrants who knew the hardship of leaving home and starting anew are not more sympathetic to the problems of refugees. "Those of us whose religious or humanitarian vision accepts all people as equals without distinction must press for international covenants that insist
on the basic inalienable human rights of refugees that do not depend on prevailing economic conditions political of circumstances. "Pressures must be mounted on despotic regimes whose record on human rights is atrocious. "If not," he said, "there will be no end in sight to the refugee problem. What progress has civilisation made when we have 14 million refugees across every continent of the world?"
Vatican worried over Asian freedom VATICAN CITY (CNS): Religious freedom is "one of the pillars" of human rights, Pope John Paul II told bishops from Southeast Asian countries where Catholics are a tiny minority.
The pope made his remarks during a meeting last week with the bishops of Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei. Pope John Paul spoke about the spread of
Islamic influence and laws limiting church comment on politics. "The problems confronting you in relation to the Church's full freedom to carry out her religious mission" are a concern shared by the Vatican, the pope said. "The increasing Islamisation of the social and civic life" in Malaysia "has at times appeared to you and to other nonMuslim communities to
encroach upon the fundamental rights of individuals and groups to practice their faith without interference", he said. Pope John Paul said he hoped "assurances" of full religious freedom given by the Malaysian government to nonMuslim religious leaders would be respected. than three percent of the Malaysian people profess Catholicism; 53 percent of the population
is Muslim. The pope encouraged "friendly discussions" in Singapore about the proposed "Maintenances of Religious Harmony Bill", which would prohibit criticism of the government from church pulpits. "Experience shows that the honest confrontation of ideas and convictions among citizens has been an indispensable condition for maintaining
harmony within society and for the development of civilisation," the pope said. "At the same time," he said, "religious convicLions cannot be separated from moral judgment, and morality applies not only to private and personal matters, but to all that constitutes the structure and course of public life in society." Singapore's population is 70 percent Buddhist
and Taoist, and four percent Catholic. The pope told the bishops that "citizens who fear undue adverse reactions when they express their convictions cannot share fully in the c onstruction of the society in which they live". He asked the bishops to help their priests find and maintain "a proper balance between spirituality and action" in
preaching the Gospel and meeting the material needs of people. "The great sign of fidelity to Christ is the exercise of an effective and universal love without discrimination of persons, which, following the example of Jesus himself, entails at the same time a love of preference for the least of our brothers and sisters, the poor and the defenseless," he said.