Every year, on the last Sunday of September, the Church celebrates World Migrant and Refugee Day. This day is a significant occasion to express closeness and solidarity to all those people who, for many reasons, are forced to move and live in vulnerable conditions.
For the 2024 edition, held on 29 September, the theme chosen by Pope Francis is ‘God walks with his people’. In his message, the Holy Father reminds us that all of us, God’s people, are migrants on this earth, on our way to the “true homeland”, the Kingdom of Heaven. Migrants are a contemporary icon of this people on a journey, of the Church on a journey, and at the same time, it is in them and in all our vulnerable brothers and sisters that we can encounter the Lord who walks with us.
Prayer
God, Almighty Father,
we are your pilgrim Church
journeying towards the Kingdom of heaven.
We live in our homeland,
but as if we were foreigners.
Every foreign place is our home,
yet every native land is foreign to us.
Though we live on earth,
our true citizenship is in heaven.
Do not let us become possessive
of the portion of the world
you have given us as a temporary home.
Help us to keep walking,
together with our migrant brothers and sisters,
toward the eternal dwelling you have prepared for us.
Open our eyes and our hearts
so that every encounter with those in need
becomes an encounter with Jesus, your Son and our Lord.
Amen.
Download materials in different languages (posters, subsidies, kits for the celebration of the GMMR, available on the website of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development)
