Fox News reports that a top Catholic Cardinal, and potential papal successor to Pope Francis, has strongly condemned mass migration and criticized those use to the Bible to "justify" open borders in an interview with Valeurs Actuelles.
Warning that in places like Europe that mass migration will have irreversible consequences for the Church and culture, Cardinal Sarah said, "All migrants who arrive in Europe are penniless, without work, without dignity...This is what the Church wants?...The Church can not cooperate with this new form of slavery that has become mass migration. If the West continues in this fatal way, there is a great risk that, due to a lack of birth, it will disappear, invaded by foreigners, just as Rome has been invaded by barbarians.”
As Fox notes, he told a French media outlet that for example..."Poland, a Catholic country that has strict immigration policies, and said he had urged it not to sacrifice its Polish and Catholic identities 'on the altar of a technocratic and stateless Europe.'
“She is free to tell Europe that everyone was created by God to be placed in a specific place, with its culture, traditions, and history,” he told the media. “This current desire to globalize the world by suppressing nations, specificities, is pure madness.”
Sarah, who serves as the head of the Vatican's liturgy office, also slammed priests and other Church officials who "say fuzzy things, vague, imprecise, to escape criticism, and they marry the stupid evolution of the world.”
Despite rhetoric from Pope Francis that would suggest the Catholic Church believes in open border without end, as Townhall has previously reported, "In Church teaching 2241, the Church offers a very reasonable and fairly balanced approach to immigration. The nation is called to accept immigrants to “the extent they are able” and protect their inalienable rights. The immigrant, however, is "expected to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens."
Church Teaching 2241 The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.
Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.