Pontifical Council for the Pastoral
Care of Migrants
and Itinerant People
ROUND-TABLE
(II)
Need for and difficulties of a specific pastoral care
of international students
Necessities
(Unofficial translation)
Rev. Sr. Mérète L.
KLINKe
Students - Chaplain
I.
The
facts about the student migratory flows
II.
What
are the stakes
·
for the young migrant students
-relating it to oneself
-relating them to
others
·
for the Church
-an issue for the Church today
III.
Challenges for the Church:
To stir the Christian communities...and to call
upon the Church
I. The facts about the student migratory flows
The theme of our Congress puts us from the outset at the heart of one of the
major challenges of our Church today. Around the world, we are witnessing a
significant increase in the number of people who carry out their studies in a
country other than their country of origin. Today the student migratory flows
are four times greater than in
Today the host countries are more and more diversified.
We cannot be indifferent to such a massive increase in migrant students. It is
an urgent and pressing call to the Church to make it one of her priorities. It
is also an ethical and spiritual requirement inherent in our condition as Jesus'
disciples.
While this adventure is an opening up, a fantastic opportunity for a young
person, many times it is also a test and a real “obstacle course”. For those who
come from poor and distant countries, and they are the most numerous, it is a
leap into the unknown because leaving for another country is not just a
linguistic challenge or an occasion to enrich one's knowledge. The young person
must often face cultural, administrative, economic and psychological problems
all by himself, and even precariousness. Then the study period becomes less a
course for acquiring new knowledge than an existential crisis in his personal
development where he is confronted with a cultural and spiritual shock.
This stay is a very important moment on a young person's way...So a type of
pastoral care that takes his culture into consideration and his “temporary”
state as a migrant student can help him to get through this crisis in a positive
way...
Indeed, when loneliness and the material difficulties become too heavy to
bear, the temptation is great to isolate oneself or stay closer to one's
compatriots. Then there is a risk of falling into a kind of “communitarianism”.
Moreover, when a foreign student is having difficulty with his studies, he could
find himself cut off from the places of conversation and socialization.
The ones that succeed in their studies can hope to return to their country with
their heads held high, to get back in touch with their families and find a job.
But what becomes of the others? Many fail at the exams for various
reasons...Some of the ones that fail will delay their return to their country as
long as possible for fear of facing the disappointment of their family and
relatives. Then failure at the university becomes failure in social and family
life.
One
day a young woman said this to me:
“I feel a pressure on me because at home they expect so much from me...I am the
first one to study at the university and get a university degree...”.
Many young men, and fewer young women among the ones I follow, are in
psychological and human difficulty.
They often feel uneasy and unsettled by the “culture clash”. There is
a gap between the social and cultural environment from which they come and the
environment that welcomes them where they change as the days and years go by...
They often experience a kind of tugging conflict that sometimes causes
psychological disturbances... I am thinking of a young, intellectually
brilliant Peruvian women who came to study political science in
“I am from a modest background but I am doing higher studies and changing.
At
home they cannot understand what I am learning and feeling. I cannot share it
with my family. And yet, I am not
from this world where I did my studies and changed, and so who am I?
Where should I live? Or work?
One should live where one feels good! But where can I feel good today
without feeling guilty?”
When they discover our de-Christianized societies, many of these students also
lose their reference points regarding a Christian tradition they received in
their country...
Therefore, the period of study or professional training abroad tends to become
an absolutely decisive moment in a young person's formation. However, it
is not easy to support it, for the higher educational institution and for the
Church...
II. What are the stakes
a. For the young migrant students
The stakes are considerable:
first of all, for them, depending on whether their stay in the host
country will be a more or less happy one. Many of them will return to their
countries to occupy positions of responsibility.
Relating it to oneself
·
It is important to pay attention to the student's spiritual and personal
experience, his singularity and uniqueness,
to support him in his culture and “temporary” state as a migrant student, to
take the time to listen to his migratory experience, regardless of his
situation. To take the time to relate it to himself and to his own history.
Like Abraham, who left his country and became a foreigner in a country he
did not know when God called him, a migrant student comes “from” somewhere and
goes “towards” another place in pursuing his goal.
This means listening, through their testimonies, to what God is telling us today
in order to continue to build the great human family which he wanted from the
creation of the world.
How to support a personal project and the return to one's country?
-
How can we help them succeed in their personal project and make a choice in
life?
Should we dare ask the question about their professional project? The return
to their country? Their project in life?
To return to their country of origin, despite the difficulties they are likely
to find there (poverty, corruption, jealousy...), or stay in the country that
has hosted them for their studies and get involved in something else?
-
We
have to offer them places of the word, but demanding places; the
proclamation of the faith implies a deepening in truth of the whole person,
trying to give “meaning” to what one experiences.
-
We
have to put ourselves in the field of support at a given moment in their
history, to accept not controlling the situation, but, at the same time, to help
the students to become aware that they are the masters of their history, the
actors of their lives, and responsible in the final analysis for their
decisions...
-
And,
at the same time, it is important to make the networks of civil society act with
regard to integration.
Relating them to others
-
It is also important to take the time to relate them to others, to a culture,
the host country's culture, by offering them places for meeting and sharing
in small groups to make the social and racial barriers fall and progress towards
a more just, more fraternal world; to offer to those who want it occasions for
intercultural, international and inter-religious meetings.
-
To
help them to find their way as young adults...brothers and sisters of one same
human family.
Tomorrow they will be the actors, the decision-makers in different areas of
society.
For the Church, helping them, without influencing them, to bring another view
about the world and to build a more human and more fraternal globalization
is both a duty and an essential challenge for a peace process.
b. What is at stake for the Church
For the Church, her testimony is at stake...Do
we know how to welcome these students from other countries, give them a
sufficient place and receive their experiences, as Benedict XVI invited us to do
on the occasion of the 2008 World Migrant Day?
“It is necessary to help them find a way to open up to the dynamism of
interculturality and be enriched in their contact with other students of
different cultures and religions.
For
young Christians, this study and formation experience can be a useful area for
the maturation of their faith, a stimulus to be open to the universalism that is
a constitutive element of the Catholic Church”.
For the Church, this is an occasion to give witness in an
inter-religious context.
Her
mission consists not only in “teaching the nations” or even exporting
humanitarianism, but also getting into a just, equitable relationship with
others that questions us as much as it allows us to question.
We should not forget that the foreign students who come to knock on our
doors are not all Catholic Christians.
From the ethical viewpoint, accompanying a young person during the period
of his studies is often an occasion to learn a common humanity.
To
be the Church, is a specific pastoral care necessary today for these students
who come from other countries?
In my opinion, YES!, but not a “compartmentalized pastoral care”
that would put the foreign students on one side and the national students on the
other with the pretext that they do not have the same expectations and the same
needs. And yet, we need to have particular consideration and attention for these
young people who come from other places. This seems primordial to me and falls
under our duty as Christians.
There is an issue for the Church today
The specificity of our ecclesial places
may mean quite simply special attention to the whole person and
listening to young foreign people in order to help them to overcome
isolation, get through the tests, and make their study stay an occasion for
human and spiritual growth.
III. Challenges for the Church
To stir the Christian communities...and call upon the Church
We also have to be creative and invent ways of being the Church with them in
connection with their communities of origin. Through the conversations and
progressions of both, we become aware of the deep roots of these young people's
faith. They really have a testimony to give us. Will we give them the chance to
speak and a place in our Christian communities?
We also have to ask ourselves from the ecclesial and ecumenical standpoint:
Aren't there some things that ought to be completely rethought regarding
ecumenism? How is it that the evangelical Churches are often better
“internationalists” in some ways? We see that the young people go where the
community is hospitable, regardless of their ecclesial belonging!
By daring to make the encounter and opening up to difference, “both move
towards a broader and enlivening view of the human adventure as well as the
encounter with God”.
This means accepting, in the name of the Gospel, to let ourselves be upset and
overturned by what we discover, to take the risk of embarking on concrete
courses of action and taking our responsibilities!
To be the Church fully with these foreign students today is to face the
challenge of a
Yes, the growing number of students from other places is an opportunity and a
challenge for the Church's universality today. Will we be capable of
tackling this challenge?
-
the challenge of enriching the faith starting from the intermingling of
cultures, in search of a truth and a catholicity with a human face?
-
The community challenge of living together inspired by the fraternity that links
Jesus' disciples with one another?