Refugee Centers likened to Modern Day Concentration Camps by the Pope

Refugee Centers likened to Modern Day Concentration Camps by the Pope

By E. Stanley Ukeni

Being true to his divine calling as a voice of conscience for a world that has grown increasingly cold, insensitive and at times cruel, toward the huddled masses of war ravaged refugee who are escaping persecution and death, and wretched migrates whose only crime is seeking a better live for themselves, the Holy Father, Pope Francis, celebrated mass at the Basilica of St. Bartholomew in Rome, on Saturday, April 22, 2017, in memory of modern day Christian martyrs of the faith.  

The Basilica of St. Bartholomew is a shrine to Christians killed for their faith in the 20^th and the 21^st century. Among the many religious relics kept that the Cathedral is the prayer book used by Father Jacques Hamel, the 85 year old French priest who was viciously slain by extremist Islamist militants who stormed into a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray last year. The terrorists had purportedly forced Father Hamel to his knees, and slid his throat while they chanted in Arabic.  

During the service at the Cathedral which is located on an island in the Tiber River which separates most of Rome from the Vatican, the Holy Father recalled a story of a martyr of the faith.

As he paid tribute to an unnamed Middle Eastern Christian woman who was killed in front of her Muslim husband for refusing to renounce her faith in the death, the Holy Pontiff related how he had met the husband of the martyred woman during his visit to a deplorable refugee camp on the Greek Island of Lesbos in 2016.

According to the Holy Father, the man, a father of three children, looked sorrowfully at him, and narrated, “Father, I am a Muslim and my wife was a Christian. In our country we were terrorized. They saw her crucifix and they asked her to throw it away…”

“When she refused, they cut her throat in front of my eyes. We loved each other so much.”

In an off-the-cuff remark, the Holy Father said of the bereaved man, “I do not know what happened to him—if he managed to leave that concentration camp, because refugee camps, many of them, are of Concentration (type) because of the great number of people left there inside them.”

I believe that, in likening some refugee internment centers as modern day concentration camps, the Holy Father is subtly highlighting the cruel inhumanity that humans continue to inflict on their fellow human being. It seems that the past has not properly though us compassion towards other who are in need, or are in distress.

I hope the words of the Holy Pontiff will give leaders cause to pause and reflect on their actions in this period that is testing human character. I don’t think that history will look kindly on those who yielded to their base impulses.   

Authored by E. Stanley Ukeni, © 2017. All Rights Reserved. This material and other articles or stories posted on this blog site may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed, in whole or in part, without prior expressed written permission from the author, E. Stanley Ukeni.

You are invited to follow E. Stanley Ukeni on twitter at; @EzStan . You’re equally invited to follow him on google+. Oh yeah, don’t forget to subscribe to this blog Site. Thanks.