22-29 May 2016 – 25 friars from COMPI, COTAF, the NORTH SLAVIC Conference, CONFRES and a delegate General of the Curia met in Verona.

Present from our Province was Fr. Dionysius Mintoff ofm, founder of Pope John XXIII Peace Lab in Hal Far, and also founder of Franciscans International ( a UN NGO).

They shared their experiences as JPIC delegates of their countries and together they developed a reflection on the issue of immigration as a personal,social and religious reality. They are working to improve awareness and to propose concrete solutions to pastoral for our evangelization efforts as Friars Minor.

How to handle the refugee crisis? There’s such a great a number that it makes the response capacity of European institutions difficult.
2015 was a record year: never had so many people lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean.

It used to be that the zone most affected by this phenomenon was that of the South (from the Italian coast to Libya), but today we are witnessing a dramatic growth of crossings and consequent deaths in the sea that separates Turkey from Greece.

The suffering experienced by these people, the despair that is written on their faces, can truly move us to compassion by engaging our charity and our minority.

Let us not fall into clichés which generate indifference. Our calling to follow Jesus Christ, supported by the charism of Francis of Assisi, asks us to immerse ourselves in the compassionate heart of Jesus.