Catholic Church in Spain leads Atlantic Hospitality project for migrants

The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) leads the Atlantic Hospitality project that aims to promote and coordinate the protection of migrants who travel this route from Africa to Europe.

This was explained in an informative meeting by Mons. Fernando García Cardiñanos, president of the Episcopal Subcommission for Migrations and Human Mobility of the EEC, together with the priest Fernando Redondo, director of the episcopal department of Migrations.

The Bishop of Mondoñedo-Ferrol has detailed that this initiative, promoted by the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development since 2022, responds to the will of the Catholic Church to “want to welcome all people from the promotion of the culture of encounter ”.

It also responds to the desire of the Catholic Church to move from words to actions since “the Church not only has to speak, but also make small fruitful signs that express the society we want.”

In short, it is about promoting the rights that, in this field, are the basis of the Church’s actions: the right not to migrate, so that “it becomes as free an option as possible” and the right to migrate.

As Redondo explained, the Atlantic Hospitality project is structured around a network that brings together 26 Catholic dioceses located in 9 different countries in Africa and Europe, plus the non-autonomous territory of Western Sahara.

In addition to Spain, it includes Senegal, Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Mali, Morocco and Mauritania.

Specifically, in Spain the two Canarian dioceses are involved, the Diocese of Málaga and Melilla and that of Cádiz and Ceuta.

The objective of the project is to “promote and coordinate the protection of migrants who travel along this migratory path that we call the Atlantic route.”

In addition to the EEC Migration Delegation, which promotes this initiative, with the support of the Dicastery for Human Development, the African and European Network for Human Mobility is involved (RAEMH) and the International Catholic Commission for Migration.

Inform, save lives and give tools

The director of the EEC Migration Department has detailed the specific objectives of this project.

Firstly, offer truthful information in the countries of origin because “they often leave their countries blind,” without knowing the living conditions, the dangers of the route, the legal difficulties or the defense of their rights.

Secondly, the aim is to save lives through Atlantic Hospitality Guidepublished in French by the Spanish Episcopal Conference and disseminated among the different dioceses, the local Cáritas network in the countries of origin and among those who make up the Atlantic migration route.

Along with it, the Catholic Church in Spain has a Migrant Resource Guide that is being updated.

“It is about providing tools, establishing safe spaces along this route, where these people can be collected and informed,” said Redondo, who also highlights that everything has been done through networking.

The Atlantic Hospitality project is involved in the contents of the application RefAid which offers help to refugees and migrants via mobile phone.

As Redondeo explained, this network of Catholic entities seeks to offer information about the danger of mafias that take advantage of the need of migrants in their places of origin and those who act in the same way in the countries of destination.

They also try to promote better training for those who decide to emigrate, to improve their chances of survival in the places to which they go. In the Canary Islands, where bodies of migrants thrown by the sea are so often collected, efforts are made to inform relatives of their deaths.

Asked about the possibility that these types of programs promote a call effect, Redondo pointed out that “the people who are here must be given the possibility of regularizing themselves, because they are being denied the most basic human rights.”

In this regard, the priest recalled a recent visit to two settlements in the Spanish province of Almería, in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, where migrants work in greenhouses growing vegetables and denounced that they live “in inhumane situations.”

In comparison to other pastoral experiences in Bangladesh and the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, Redondo stated that “there I have not seen the situation that I found in Almería. “People who are living in shacks made of plastic and cardboard, without water, with irregular electrical hookups.”