Vatican City - A top Vatican official called the Bush administration’s plans for hundreds of miles of new security fences on the United States-Mexico border “inhuman.”
“Speaking of borders, I must unfortunately say that in a world that greeted the fall of the Berlin Wall with joy, new walls are being built between neighborhood and neighborhood, city and city, nation and nation,” said Cardinal Renato Martino, according to news agency reports.
Cardinal Martino, who heads the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, was presenting Pope Benedict XVI’s message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees at a news conference today.
When he was asked specifically about President George W. Bush’s plan to sign legislation approving the construction of 700 miles of security fences along the border, Cardinal Martino offered praise for the Catholic bishops in Mexico and the United States who have spoken against it. He called the plan “an inhuman program, which is what the construction of that wall and all others is,” according to Reuters.
The security-fence plan figured prominently in the recent American midterm elections. Proponents say the fence is needed to help stem a tide of illegal immigrants slipping into the country far from major highways and formal border crossings; opponents say it will cause more problems, whether environmental, humanitarian or financial, than it solves.
Cardinal Martino also decried modern-day human trafficking, specifically the forced prostitution of women and child labor.
“It’s worse than the slavery of those whose slaves who were taken from Africa and brought to other countries,” said Cardinal Martino. “In a world which proclaims human rights left and right, let’s see what it does about the rights of so many human beings which are not respected, but trampled.”
In his message, the pope also addressed immigration problems in Europe, especially those involving migrants from Muslim countries.
“Much is already being done for the integration of the families of immigrants, although much still remains to be done,” he said, but “it is necessary to provide for legislative, juridical and social intervention to facilitate such an integration.”