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In Alex Holmes' latest update from Calais he reflects on the living conditions and the amazing resilience of those stuck at the UK border. 

‘How are the mice, Yoel?’
‘Mice are busy’.
‘What will you give them for dinner?’
‘I give them whisky then they dance.’ 

It had begun a few days before. ‘I moved out of the army camp to a house, but it is a horrifying house. It stinks very bad. I vomited 3 times. I stayed in army camp 7 months but camp is better than here.’

Yoel was moved from Home Office accommodation in a former British army barracks. He was dropped at the door of a house and given a key. Just a key. No money, no food. It was a Friday.

Monday came. ‘Today I got some money. I was cleaning all the day. I am tired. I think this house has not been cleaned for 10 years. If the manager sees he will say thank you.  Problem is a lot of mouse in the kichin.’

Across the Channel in Calais, it’s rats. They run amok in the refugee encampments, playing brazen games of chase, gnawing holes in the guys’ tents, and eating into their food supplies. They also swim. A group of Eritreans watch aghast as a rat doggy-paddles across the putrescent drain that runs beside their camp. ‘This is amazing’, says Abel, ‘Eritrean rats can’t swim. Perhaps we tie many rats together and they carry us across the sea to UK.’

CRS, the camp cat, is no ratter. Named after the French riot police, Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, CRS the cat bears none of the riot police’s aggressive tendencies. She walks delicately around the puddles and avoids the mud. Her favoured night time abode is Jamal’s tent. 

Jamal is from Eritrea. Having escaped a country which has been described as the ‘North Korea of Africa’, he dreams of reaching the UK. ‘I strongly believe that the UK is the country of democracy and freedom. I know it's not a paradise. I think you should be grateful for the safety & freedom you have today in your own country. I swear to God if I have had all this stuff in my country I would never leave my beautiful homeland but unfortunately I was forced. I had no other option but flee.’ After a year in Calais, ‘my mind is restless. I'm frustrated. Tired. Fed up. I see people making it to UK very easily while I'm stuck here. I guess some people are luckier than others, but I know God is not going to forsake me.’ 

This same week, two of his fellow Eritrean exiles in Calais had successfully reached the UK. Fikru, who had penned the words ‘Never Give Up’ onto his tent. And Saare, who two days prior to his crossing of the Channel, had sent a photo of a bird of prey pinning a snake to the ground with its talons. ‘I thought this would describe life. There are challenges every time, but we manage them like the bird is doing’. And like Yoel is doing. ‘I disgust with mouse’. Accompanying the message an emoji, an arm with a bulging flexed bicep. Yoel is on the attack; beware, drunken dancing mice.

Dr Duncan MacLaren KCSG writes our latest blog and reflects on the true meaning of Integral Human Development.

There is no magisterial definition of Integral Human Development (IHD). There are bits and pieces from scripture, tradition and modern Catholic Social Teaching (CST) documents, but no neat definition. Yet for Pope Francis, the term expands and builds on what Justice and Peace has meant in the past. He changed the name of the former Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace to the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, incorporating the dicasteries (ministries) dealing with charity, people on the move (refugees, migrants and asylum seekers) and health, and adding what he calls in Laudato Si’, integral ecology. In other words, the Pope has inserted the entire gamut of services that care for humanity and the planet into the one ecclesial organisation. It illustrates well one of his main points in Laudato Si’, that “everything is connected”. (1)

In introducing Integral Human Development viewed through the lens of Pope Francis, I am going to concentrate on what it means for Catholic aid and development agencies (such as SCIAF/Caritas Scotland). But bear in mind - IHD is much larger.

In 2017, at a meeting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Populorum Progressio, Pope Francis called integral human development “the path of good that the human family is called to follow”, illustrating how we as followers of Christ must live out the common good in our lives. (2)  The South African Dominican theologian, Albert Nolan OP, describes the common good as “whatever is best for the whole human family or the whole community of living beings, or the whole universe in its grand unfolding”. (3) 

So IHD is much more than a development which integrates all aspects of life, an IHD definition which many Catholic aid and development agencies have used. 

IHD is not a new development theory but a moral theology that builds on the best community, people-centred development practices while adding insights from Catholic Social Teaching and the lives of the poorest. St Paul VI’s encyclical, Populorum Progressio (1967), broke the link between development and economic growth, promoted by the modernisation theorists. Unlike them, he insisted that, to be authentic, development had to promote the good of every person and the whole person, including the spirituality of the person, shifting the emphasis from an externality to an inner transformation which included the option for the poor. What does it mean in practice?

IHD promotes a holistic development that covers the whole of life, including the transcendent. After all, in the global South, most communities follow a faith tradition which provides them with the values that inform their decisions on important life matters. The late Kenyan theologian, John Mbiti, wrote that it was religion that coloured Africans’ understanding of the Universe and their participation in that universe, and that resulted in the saying of ‘I am because we are’. (4) Yet religion with its communitarian view of life is scarcely taken into account when westerners design development programmes in the sub-Saharan region where fifty per cent of the world’s poorest people live. IHD respects traditional cultures, values and institutions and works through them so that the people own their own development and programmes are shaped around their own beliefs.

IHD’s starting point is to uphold the dignity of the human person. That also means listening to and empowering the so-called beneficiaries whom SCIAF, having decolonised their language, now call ‘programme participants’. That means making partners (the community-based organisations which implement programmes on the ground) co-creators of programmes. The people themselves become the ‘doers and judges’ of programmes. (5) That then builds up their self-esteem which enables them to make their development sustainable.

It is important that the development worker (or supporter) is transformed as well as the programme participant and that she develops, in the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, “a heart which sees” which combines radical empathy with a deeper sense of human flourishing.(6) IHD demands that the so-called beneficiaries are the subjects of their own development and not the objects of someone else’s idea of how they should be ‘developed’. 

In summary, IHD means for Catholic aid agencies that human dignity comes before unbridled economic growth; that a suitable anthropology emerges out of a Catholic understanding of what ‘human’ means; that peace with justice and reconciliation practice are cross-cutting issues since without peace there is no development; that the role of lay people is important in terms of implementation; that the poor themselves participate comprehensively and actively in their own development; that the demand issuing from the Second Vatican Council documents and Fratelli Tutti to engage ecumenically and with other faiths is taken seriously; that, as Pope Francis writes, there is an “integrated approach to combatting poverty, restoring dignity and at the same time protecting nature”. (7)

What this looks like reminds me of a succinct comment by a resident in a care home run by Caritas Czech in Brno, “I came here to die but Caritas has made me see that I am here to live”.

Dr Duncan MacLaren KCSG, SCIAF’s first Director, former Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis and former Adjunct Professor of Australian Catholic University where he taught Catholic social ethics and International Development Studies. His doctorate deals with integral human development. He was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory the Great in 2016 by Pope Francis for his service to the Church.

----------------------------------------------------------------------  (1) Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: on Care for our Common Home, (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015) par. 16.

(2) Pope Francis, Address to Vatican Conference on 50th anniversary of “Populorum Progressio”, 4th April 2017. Retrieved from http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2017/april/documents/papa-francesco_20170404_convegno-populorum-progressio.html 

(3) Albert Nolan OP, Jesus Today: A Spirituality of Radical Freedom, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006) 188

(4) John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1969) 262.

(5) The term ‘Doers and judges’ comes from Amartya Sen’s book, Development as Freedom (Oxford: OUP, 1999).

(6) Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005) par. 31b.

(7) Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ op. cit.

Rev. Paul Milarvie, Parish Priest St. Mary’s Duntocher & St. Joseph’s Faifley reflects on the year gone by and future for the post pandemic church.  Weekly blog.

When we celebrated Mass on the Solemnity of St. Joseph last year, there was an eerie silence as people left the Church. We were lost. We did not know what to do. Many felt abandoned and cut off from their faith. It was a difficult day. Few of us would ever have thought that almost a year later, we would still be struggling with Covid-19. Many of us were not prepared for the pandemic and for the impact that it would have on our lives: personally, socially, spiritually and emotionally. It will take us a long time to recover and a lot of healing will be much needed in society and also in the Church. Apart from an online weekly bulletin on our parish Facebook page, we were ill-prepared. However, as the weeks went on, many of us realized that doing nothing was not an option. We embraced digital technology to keep in touch with as many people as possible. Initially, a weekly reflection was offered on the parish Facebook page, followed some weeks later with the streaming of mass and on the first Sunday of Advent, a new website was launched for the parishes of St. Mary’s Duntocher and St. Joseph’s Faifley. Suddenly, our connectedness went far beyond the physical boundaries of both parishes. 

Parishioners responded, and many people feel they belong, once again, to their community of faith. That is important for us and through our social media we are able to alert our parishioners to the many creative online offerings from other parishes. Therefore, when places of worship were asked to close in January, we did not panic. Our parish communities did not experience that same sense of loss that they had in March. The work and encouragement of people in both parishes over the last nine months had paid off and reluctantly we defaulted, once again, to digital liturgy. We know it is not ideal; we know it is not the same as being in Church and we know it is not perfect.  But we are in a better place to face the current crisis. 

There is one question that many people ask: “What is the post-pandemic parish going to look like?”  We do not know, but it will be different.  Perhaps, Pope Francis in “Evangelii Gaudium” gives us the answer: “I dream, of a “missionary option,” that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, languages and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.” (EG 27). Will we respond to his invitation?  

NB:  this blog first appeared in the March 2021 edition of Flourish, the Archdiocese of Glagsow publication.