Let’s make society, Church more inclusive: Bishop

PANAJI: Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao on Sunday appealed to priests and laity to help make society, the Church more inclusive. In his address to mark World Day of migrants and refugees, Ferrao remembered all Goans who have migrated to other states and countries, as well as all those who have migrated to Goa.
“Let us work, each in our community, to include all and help the society and our Church become more inclusive,” he said. “Let us ensure that no human being is left behind or left out..., for we are 'called to dream together, fearlessly, as a single human family, as companions on the same journey, as sons and daughters of the same earth that is our common home, sisters, brothers all'”.
He said that many of those who have moved away from their birthplace, particularly the poor, face innumerable hardships, generally created by the natives of the land they have moved to. “It is in this context that I would like to say, with Pope Francis, that we can no longer think in terms of ‘them’ and ‘those’, but only ‘us’, so that we can work towards an ever-wider ‘We’. And this ‘We’ is “a clear horizon for our common journey in the world,” he said.
“In the world and within the Church, the ‘we’ “is crumbling and cracking due to myopic, aggressive forms of nationalism and radical individualism,” he said. “The victims of this are those who most easily become viewed as others — those who live on the peripheries and the marginalised, including migrants and refugees. As the Pope rightly says, ‘we are all in the same boat and called to work together so that there will be no more walls that separate us, no longer others, but only a single ‘We’, encompassing all of humanity.”