Polish bishops appeal for more tolerant rhetoric on migrants

Poland’s Catholic bishops have appealed to politicians and the media to discuss migration in a more “responsible way” and not to use the issue to stir up “xenophobic attitudes”. They note that the church’s position is to welcome newcomers, while also recalling that Poles themselves have often been migrants.

In a statement issued yesterday, the Polish Episcopal Conference (KEP) – the central organ of the Catholic church in Poland – observed that the ongoing campaign for this autumn’s parliamentary elections has been accompanied by “intensified political emotions and public debate”.

“One must not succumb to the temptation to arouse fear, hostility or resentment towards newcomers in the name of falsely understood patriotism or political calculations, especially because of their status, religion or origin,” the bishops added.

Recent weeks have seen migration become a central theme of the campaign. The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has pledged to resist the EU’s plans to introduce a new migration pact that would give countries quotas of relocated migrants and require them to pay €20,000 for each one they refuse.

The main opposition party, Civic Platform (PO), has in turn accused PiS of hypocrisy, saying that it is rejecting a few thousand relocated immigrants from mainly Muslim countries while at the same time in recent years overseeing the arrival of tens of thousands of immigrants from such countries to Poland.

“We strongly warn against the instrumental use [of migrants and refugees] for political games and the development of xenophobic attitudes,” wrote KEP in its appeal. “Such actions are incompatible with Christian teaching.”

“Anti-refugee or anti-immigration narratives not only shape social attitudes, they also have an impact on the lives of specific people,” added the bishops. “They deprive the refugee and the migrant of their human dignity.”

They note that demographic and economic trends mean that Poland is already having to adapt to immigration, while the “humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border” has created “a deadly trap for some newcomers seeking a dignified life”.

Since 2021, tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers – mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – have been trying to cross into Poland from Belarus with the encouragement and assistance of the Belarusian authorities.

That crisis led the KEP in August 2021 to criticise those seeking to “induce fear of other people”, which the bishops labelled “inhuman and un-Christian”. In October and December of that year, thet issued further appeals for people not to stigmatise migrants and refugees.

Commenting indirectly on the EU migration pact, in their new statement the KEP declared that “it is necessary at the European level to develop fair solidarity projects that evenly spread the burden and costs of helping people who have already received asylum or international protection status”.

However, it also called for “controlled migration processes” to be followed “in contrast to chaotic migration, often coordinated by gangs of smugglers, deceiving and creating false hopes for people looking for decent living conditions”.

The bishops appealed to Poland’s own “rich migration experience and Christian heritage”, which “should predispose us to promote the idea of ​​wise hospitality and solidarity…guided above all by the attitudes of openness, respect towards migrants and refugees and the broadly understood common good”.

“We remind you of the inalienable right of every human being to migrate and look for a better place to live,” added the KEP. “This is a thought present in the universal teaching of the Church. Generations of Poles have benefited from it for centuries.”

Main image credit: BP KEP/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.