Prayers for regularisation at the nation's mother churches

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?

Bishop at Migrants' Mass calls for regularisation

Rt Rev Patrick Lynch, the Catholic bishop in charge of migration matters, gave the homily at Monday’s Mass for Migrants at Westminster Cathedral. You can listen to it and read it here – congratulations to Eddie at Archbishop’s House for fab communications.

Bishop Patrick said many interesting and challenging things that were picked up in this Press Association report by its religion correspondent, Martha Linden.

On regularisation, Bishop Pat gave a categoric, explicit endorsement of the Strangers into Citizens call. We are profoundly grateful – not least because he puts it so beautifully:

The Church is concerned for all workers - documented and undocumented. A migrant’s legal status is quite separate from his or her human dignity. A human being’s worth is defined by their God given dignity, not by the papers they do or do not carry. There is clear moral case that undocumented workers who have lived and worked in this country for five years or more should be given the opportunity to build a future in the United Kingdom and continue to contribute to British society. You have worked here: your children have been born here and attend school here: you are part of our parishes and our society here and a way should be found so that you can remain here.

MPs meet SiC paddles at Westminster tube

MPs arriving at Parliament at Westminster tube over the next month have a daily reminder of the Strangers into Citizens campaign in the shape of bright orange “paddles” at the ticket barriers.

The paddles, advertising the Strangers into Citizens logo, will remain in place until the campaign’s historic gathering in Trafalgar Square on 4 May.

Strangers into Citizens is calling for an “earned amnesty” for some 450,000 of the nation’s estimated 750,000 undocumented migrants. The campaign is calling for the regularization of the status of those who have put down roots in the UK, have lived in the country for many years, and whom the Government admits cannot be forcibly removed.

Where regularization is combined with border enforcement, as in Spain in 2005, levels of “illegal immigration” have dropped.

The Strangers into Citizens campaign, which was begun by members of London Citizens following a call in 2006 by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, is organizing the largest pro-migrants rally in UK history on 4 May following a series of simultaneous services at Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and Methodist Central Hall.

The thousands arriving at Westminster tube that day for the services or for the rally at Trafalgar Square will be greeted by the paddles.

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