“We bear in mind the war, persecutions, discrimination of people and nations for many and various senseless reasons, we also bring the attacks against life, against the integrity of our brothers, and all this makes us cry with those who suffer, all this makes us desire a new humanity, all this makes us implore the Virgin of Fatima not to allow the dark night of humanity to thicken further, but to make the brightness of the future shine already,” said Virgílio Antunes at the Sanctuary of Fatima.
In the homily of the celebration of the word, during the international pilgrimage of August 12 and 13, Virgílio Antunes emphasized that, “among the shadows that obscure people and nations, the dramatic experience of refugees and exiles due to war, hunger, persecutions, injustices, totalitarian policies, and absolutely inhumane living conditions stands out in the present.”
For the president of the celebrations, which are part of the national pilgrimage of migrants and refugees to Fatima, “the fact that throughout all periods of History there have always been phenomena similar to this, does not diminish in any way the magnitude of the problem, nor the responsibility of the human community.”
“Today, we can say that we have an even greater responsibility because we know the negative experiences of the past and because we are at the top, at least from a chronological point of view, of our civilizational journey, although we have to recognize that, in some aspects, there have been, and continue to be, many setbacks,” he argued in the celebration of the word, preceded by the recitation of the rosary and the candle procession, before about 45,000 faithful, according to sanctuary data.
The also vice-president of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference emphasized that “in Portugal, in Europe and in so many other places in the world” we know “this reality of forced migrations, the reality of refugees and exiles,” not only through the media, but also directly and personally.
“Every day we contact people – men, women and children – who are not only migrants by their own will, by free will, by the legitimate desire to seek better living conditions for their families. We have neighbors who are refugees and exiles, we work with them, we meet them on the same church benches, in the same hospital wards, children sit at the same desks in classrooms and play in the same school playgrounds,” he highlighted.
Quoting the Bible, the Bishop of Coimbra reminded that “for God there are no foreigners,” but “only men and women who walk on this earth, some perhaps benefited by the possibilities of a peaceful life and with normal conditions for their pilgrimage, and others who flee from the past and long for a happier present and future,” to note that although today we speak of the “equal dignity of all,” this “is still a dream to be realized.”
Earlier, referring to the Fatima vigil, of whose sanctuary he was once rector, he emphasized that here one feels “the heart of the world pulsing in the diversity of faces and life experiences,” because “here arrive the greatest joys, but also the greatest sorrows, here one thanks and here one pleads, here sometimes even inner revolt surfaces, but also the possibility of pacifying the heart,” adding that in this temple the Virgin “left the world a glimmer of clarity, promising hope.”
