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“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.

Prisoners’ Week is a churches’ initiative that aims to celebrate and raise awareness of the work in Scotland to support prisoners and their families. This year, the theme has been Hope Within and throughout the week the National Prison Visitors Centre Steering Group has encouraged family members and friends who visit people in prison to share their hopes for their families, friends and communities.

When we think about reform of the justice system and rehabilitation we tend to focus on education, employability and housing. When considering how to make society safer and fairer, the impact of the justice system on prisoners’ families and the vital role they play in supporting their family members throughout their sentence and after release is often overlooked. 

The most recent Prisoners Survey results suggests nine out of ten prisoners are in regular contact with friends and family outside prison and on any given night 10,000 children in Scotland have a parent in prison.

Prisoners’ families have been described as “the most effective resettlement agency”. Prisoners who maintain good contact with their family are six times less likely to re-offend. Over half of prisoners move in with family or friends on release and a further twenty per cent have their rent or mortgage covered by family members while they are in prison. Only around sixteen per cent have a job to go to on release – mostly with the help of previous employers, family or friends. Above all – prisoners’ families are important to them because they love them. 

 

And prisoners are very important to their families. One family member responding to our Prisoners’ Week campaign wrote:

 

“Why do I write, visit and accept calls? Why do I hold it down and keep things in order at home? Because when you love someone unconditionally you are their backbone and their strength. Love knows no boundaries. Regardless of the situation, turning my back is not an option. This is how we roll…”

That unconditional love is perhaps most important of all for children. Research shows that the quality of our relationship with our parents during childhood has a life-long influence on how well we do in school, our health and our relationships with other people. That is every bit as true if a parent is in prison. Prisoners’ children are more likely than other children to experience disadvantage, mental health problems and to go on to offend. So it is hugely important that all prisoners and their families should have access to initiatives which allow imprisoned parents to play a positive and active role in their children’s lives – from Bookbug sessions and parenting programmes to homework clubs and Halloween parties. Just because someone is in prison, it does not and should not stop families from loving each other, supporting each other and planning their futures together.

Many Visitors Centres work with prisoners’ children to encourage them to express their hopes. I believe that small people should have big dreams so it made me smile to see some of these such as “I hope to play for Man City” and “I hope to be a politician”. One young person had written that they dreamed of doing a PhD in nuclear physics!

Others with more modest aspirations reveal the pain of separation. “We will be a family again” is a sad hope to see written in childish handwriting. “I hope Dad will be home for Christmas” is a common theme.

Others write  “For people to realise the effect of bullying”, and “I hope that bullies just disappear”. For too many children, stigma and trauma are part and parcel of having a parent in prison - burdens no child should have to carry.

I hope that the voices of prisoners and their families will continue to be heard and they will be supported to achieve their aspirations as we all deserve to be. Because for all of us to thrive we all need something to do, someone to love and something to hope for.

 

For more information on the importance of families and how you can continue to support them visit www.familiesoutside.org.uk

I have to admit to a real excitement when, from the heart of our Church, I heard Pope Francis condemn nuclear weapons and affirm the Christian obligation to nonviolence. 

As a member of Pax Christi, it was a privilege to be invited to a Vatican-hosted conference on the theme “Perspectives for a world free from nuclear weapons and for integral disarmament”. It is not often that students, diplomats, theologians, activists, Hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bomb) and Nobel peace laureates from around the world meet to reflect on how, together, we can work for a nuclear free world.  It was encouraging, too, that Bishop William Nolan, President of the Justice and Peace Scotland Commission, took part in the Conference. 

An unexpected highlight was the personal greeting we received from Pope Francis.  That he made himself available to meet this group of over 350 people was a witness and sign of his great humanity and solidarity with the people of the world.

A key ‘take-away’ for me was, of course, the shift by the Church from a position held since 1982 that nuclear deterrence was only morally acceptable as part of a process to nuclear disarmament to today’s position of condemnation of their threat, use and possession.

Building on years of excellent work to make clear the humanitarian and environmental impact of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing that has been undertaken by organisations such as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), CND, and Pax Christi, Pope Francis was able to say, “if we also take into account the risk of an accidental detonation as a result of error of any kind, the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned.  For they exist in the service of a mentality of fear that affects not only the parties in conflict but the entire human race.”

The 30 contributions to the Conference were not all from those ‘on our side’. Rose Gottemoeller, NATO Deputy Secretary General, cautioned the need for verifiable, progressive disarmament - wanting a nuclear free world but without jeopardising security.  Dr Emily Landau, research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel suggested that paths to peace are determined by states and not by weapons. She said that for seven decades, nuclear weapons have been weapons of deterrence.

Overwhelmingly, however, speakers affirmed the need to move away from policies of fear, deterrence, militarism towards human, integral peace and security. Cardinal Turkson reminded us “nuclear weapons reduce the ability to invest in real security”.   Mohamed el Baradei, (former Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency) elaborated on this theme, saying that a security based on nuclear weapons is a ‘contradictory’ security, causing more suspicion and fear. There is no shortage of money, but there are skewed priorities.

I also took away a strong resolve to find even better and more effective ways of sharing this powerful message.  Several times we heard of the importance of civil society and faith based groups in particular. Beatrice Finn of ICAN spoke of the role of people of faith as a ‘constant life-light’ in support for her own campaign – which has rightly been awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

We have to both amplify the message of the Church and be an advocate for it at national level – with governments and with Bishops’ Conferences.  A passionate plea came from Bishop McElroy of San Diego, “The ministry of the Church in the promotion of peace must at its core be one of conversion to new ways of thinking in the hearts of individuals and the international system.”

Our campaigning toolbox has been enhanced by this Conference and its messages. How creative and persuasive can we be in turning these powerful words into policy?

 

For a full text of Pope Francis’ speech:
http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2017/11/10/171110e.html

 

Pat Gaffney is General Secretary of the British Section of Pax Christi
www.paxchristi.org.uk

 

Photograph courtesy of National Catholic Reporter.