Should there have been any doubt in anyone’s mind that the Christian Churches in Britain are backing the Strangers into Citizens call, Monday’s moving services at St Margaret’s (Westminster Abbey), Methodist Central Hall, and Westminster Cathedral should have removed it. Not only was the call for regularisation, but the campaign was name-checked – not surprisingly, given the biblical resonances of its name, and its origins in the Cardinal’s call at the 2006 Mass.
At the Cathedral, Bishop Thomas McMahon began the Mass for Migrant Workers with a prayer to bring people “out of degradation into dignity, out of darkness into light, from strangers into citizens”.
Over at St Margaret’s, meanwhile, Rev. Ralph Godsall opened the Service ‘to celebrate the presence of migrants in the UK’ by praying “that a pathway into citizenship may be granted those whose basic human rights have been denied”. And he continued: “So today we ask God to turn strangers into citizens.”
Did anyone catch any such prayers at the Gospel service and can share them?
And where do we get Bishop Tom Butler’s homily?
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I didn't catch which speaker it was at Methodist Hall, but someone did well to explain why it was 'prophetic' in a christian sense, because it was not just the future but what the future SHOULD be, when someone speaks up for 'the least of us'. Much quotation of how the stranger should be 'invited in' as well.
ReplyDeleteFor those of us who are non-religious but glad of "the faithful"'s commitment to make social inclusion a moral and spiritual issue, it was very uplifting, an honour to be present.