refugees

Because of the changing nature of war and the increased sophistication of weapons available readily on open markets around the world, the age-old phenomenon of refugees has become epidemic in the past fifty years. A few young boys with automatic weapons can force the population of a town to take refuge in the countryside, taking with them only what they can carry. Modern wars are mostly civil wars which pit people of different ethnic backgrounds against each other. Their aim is not primarily to kill the soldiers of the opposing army, it is to ethnically cleanse conquered areas. Whereas many innocent civilians, especially women and children, will be killed in the process, the purpose of local wars is to drive the displaced inhabitants into the area controlled by the enemy, which will now have an extra burden on its hands. The litany of horror in recent years is recited on our ratio broadcasts and television news. Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, South Africa, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, have suffered this torture. Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iran, Iraq, East Tinior, Afghanistan, have borne this cross. Albania, Kosovo, Chechnya, along with Chili, El Salvador, Haiti have become familiar places to us. Refugee camps have replaced the killing fields.
Most refugees are displaced internally or into neighbouring countries. Spiritans, who work in so many of these suffering countries, have been engrossed in refugee work since the phenomenon began. Frans Timmermans served as coordinator of the Church's aid programs in all of sub-Equatorial Africa. The efforts of the Irish Spiritans to save the refugees of the Nigerian civil war, drew widespread coverage and admiration. Spiritans from four different countries worked in the camps around the Rwandan borders. Canadian Spiritan Conor Kennedy had thirty-five thousand refugees from Mozambique in his parish in Malawi. Spiritans stayed with their people in Zaire and Haiti, Sierra Leone and Angola, through their agonies, trying to provide food and shelter and medical care for the throngs of displaced victims of the wars.
And for the beleaguered refugees who arrived in first world countries, many found welcome and support at the hands of the Spiritans. Refugee claimants found help in Spiritan houses from our central headquarters in Rome, to our residences and parishes in European and North American countries. No longer had a Spiritan to serve overseas to be part of the vision which Libermann had for the Congregation.
The individual ways in which Spiritans got involved are too diverse and numerous to quantify but Brottier House in Toronto may serve as a typical example. The former student residence on Hambly Avenue in the Beaches area of Toronto was converted into a residential refugee centre in 1991. Financed by the Spiritans and operated by dedicated volunteers, the residence and staff have served five hundred refugees from thirty-nine countries since it opened.
A drop in the ocean of displaced humanity! Yes indeed, but nonetheless a candle shining in the dark world of war, torture, famine, displacement... the world of the refugee.
Gerald Fitzgerald, CSSp