VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - The Vatican is urging regularization of 600,000 illegal immigrants following a manifesto by Spain's far-left parties.
On Wednesday, Fr. Fabio Baggio, the Holy See's Undersecretary for Migrants and Refugees, railed against the post-pandemic "new protectionism" created by countries wanting to "favor their nationals."
Marxist Pablo Iglesias, the
Vatican's cheerleader on migration
Addressing the VI Forum on Migration and Human Mobility convened by the Episcopal Commission on Migration, Baggio warned of "massive migratory flows arising from the desire of the people to seek a solution to economic problems."
"There are thousands of migrant workers who have had to return to their land, lost their jobs, stopped sending remittances to their families, and that's why we have families in crisis and entire nations that are facing returnee crises and do not know how to act," Baggio said.
"The pandemic has affected all people, yes, but the most vulnerable in a more particular way," he lamented.
"In the Vatican Commission that the Pope has constituted for COVID-19, and to which I also belong, we are convinced that this crisis constitutes an opportunity, a kairos, to change the system," the Scalabrinian priest remarked.
Criticizing the current global economic and social system as flawed, "especially where discriminations and asymmetries in the access and distribution of resources are more evident," Baggio said that the pandemic was an "opportunity to change the system and propose new economic systems" to "restart another idea of society and another idea of a world system."
On July 8, Spain's far-left coalition Unidas Podemos (United We Can), comprising Podemos, United Left and other left-wing parties, issued a manifesto titled "Heroes of COVID-19 and End of Irregularity" describing foreign nationals who worked in Spain during the pandemic as "heroes."
"We think it is decent, it is fair and it is patriotic to recognize all these heroes as compatriots and who can, therefore, have extraordinary access to Spanish nationality," the statement announced in the Congress of Deputies, Spain's lower house of Parliament.
They referred specifically to 600,000 migrants "who were on Spanish soil" when the Wuhan virus emergency was declared.
It is "the right decision also from the health and economic point of view," since "the continuity of the irregularity would put at risk not only the health of these people but also that of all citizens," Unidas Podemos stated.
Podemos, the main party in the leftist alliance, is headed by Pablo Iglesias, who is listed by George Soros' Open Society Foundations' non-governmental organization as a "reliable ally."
Iglesias, a 35-year-old professor of political science at Complutense University of Madrid, has been described as "the Marxist icon that could only happen to Spain."
"I consider myself a Marxist. Let us say that behind the theoretical implications and those of Podemos, there is a very specific interpretation of Gramsci," Iglesias revealed.
Italian Marxist philosopher and communist politician Antonio Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony and is hailed as "the godfather of cultural Marxism" and "identity politics."
Following Fr. Baggio's endorsement of "mass regularization," Pablo Echenique, spokesman for Unidas Podemos, sent a tweet to the center-right Partido Popular and the nationalist Vox Party urging them as Catholics to heed the Vatican's call for migrant amnesty.
Spain's immigration law was amended four times between 2000 and 2004, and four regularization processes were implemented. A further 600,000 immigrants underwent a regularization process in 2005.
Muslims from Morocco constitute the largest group of immigrants in the traditionally Catholic country. Moroccans are Spain's second-largest minority.
Headed by Pope Francis, the Migrants and Refugees Section helps the Church to accompany refugees, those who are forced to migrate or victims of human trafficking.
The migrant section is part of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development created by Pope Francis through his motu proprio Humanam Progressionem in 2016.
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