In this week’s blog Danny Sweeney, Our Social Justice Coordinator, reflects on his recent visit to Calais.
“We take our Saints seriously in this house!” That’s what Br Johannes told me the first morning we were in Calais as we gathered for morning prayer. He handed me a book about the lives of witnesses; not all (yet) saints, but holy men and women to serve as inspiration at the start of the day. He advised me to read both the short and long versions of the story of Saint Joseph Pignatelli SJ, who led the Jesuits during their exile from Spain.
The Catholic Worker House in Calais is named for St. Maria Skotbsova, also known as St. Mary of Paris, who is relatively unknown in the UK. Born in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire, she was a poet, mother, and would-be assassin (she once planned to assassinate Trotsky). Travelling to France, she answered a vocation to become a nun on condition that she was free to minster to the poor and live among them.
During the Nazi occupation, her house began sheltering Jews and providing them with false papers. She died in Ravensbrück concentration camp on Easter Saturday 1945, and was canonised by the Orthodox Church in 2004. The Catholic Worker House in Calais tries to follow her example, being prayerfully present with and among the poor.
Br Johannes said that when the so-called ‘jungle’ refugee camp was still standing, his work was mostly pastoral. Since its demolition in October 2016, the authorities have refused to allow any permanent refugee site and his increasingly hard work is about relieving the worst of the present Calais situation. During the summer, the authorities banned showers and at one point even the distribution of food.
But if by the end of this blog it reads as a depressing, or despairing situation, I will have failed. The living conditions are harsh, the young migrants there are facing great challenges, in many cases having already overcome many trials to get to Calais. But there is joy.
We visited a warehouse where several organisations operate, sorting donations from the UK and across Europe. The mostly male refugee population needs smaller sizes of clothing, but nothing is wasted. What can’t be used in Calais goes to local organisations working with the homeless, to Paris, or for charity re-sale.
The Refugee Community Kitchen also operates here – providing 2,500 meals every day to refugees in Calais, Dunkirk, and other areas. Nearly everyone is a volunteer, coordinated by long-term helpers. Music is played in the kitchen and at the distribution points, transforming into a celebration what could be an aggressive, or tense struggle to avoid missing out. The volunteers always make sure there is enough to go round (and some to spare). Some youngsters played football waiting for the queue to diminish.
Everyone joins in in collecting rubbish, making sure the police can’t find fault. Then they take bottles of water and seek shelter for the night. They know there’ll be breakfast in the morning.
Maria Skobtsova House is busy, full of young people in need of both material and spiritual support, and relying on donations and goodwill to provide for nearly everything. But it’s also full of music, and prayer. Morning prayer was in English, but each evening we joined in English, French, Tigrinya, and Amharic prayers.
Our visit has enjoyed increasing media attention, and with motions being raised in both Scottish and UK Parliaments we hope the situation will be back on the agenda.
The Church here can use its voice, but it is those, of any and all faiths cooking, cleaning, accompanying to food distribution points, or offering lifts to clinics, who are the hands and feet of Christ in Calais.
We heard that many locals donate whatever they can, or offer a shower, or bed for a night or two, even though there is local opposition and the political far right in the region is highly organised. In the face of such opposition, it’s good to know there are saints walking in Calais right now. And I agree with Johannes: we should take our saints seriously.
Danny Sweeney is Justice and Peace Scotland’s Social Justice Co-ordinator, and an animator with Salesian Youth Minsitry.