International Catholic Migration Commission celebrates 75th anniversary

Vatican News

With approximately 304 million international migrants worldwide, according to data from the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, the need to accompany our brothers and sisters on the move, recognising and upholding their inalienable human dignity, is more urgent than ever.

That is the mission at the heart of the work of the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) that has protected and served uprooted people – refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, victims of human trafficking, and migrants – regardless of faith, race, ethnicity or nationality, since its inception.

Established in 1951 thanks to the vision and will of Pope Pius XII, Cardinal Montini (later Pope Paul VI) and American layman James Norris, the Commission’s Council, which represents national Episcopal Conferences and local Churches from across the world, will meet in Rome on 10-12 November.

The meeting will focus on the global situation related to human mobility and the specific challenges the Church is encountering across every continent. Members are set to elect a President and approve a new organisational strategy for the coming four years.

Among the speakers are Cardinal Fabio Baggio, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, members of that Dicastery, and Filippo Grandi, the former UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Joining the meeting, the Catholic Church’s humanitarian organisation, Caritas Internationalis, Jesuit Refugee Service and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

In its statement announcing the meeting, the ICMC quotes Pope Leo XIV’s Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi te:

“The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking. Where the world sees threats, she sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges. She knows that her proclamation of the Gospel is credible only when it is translated into gestures of closeness and welcome. And she knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.”