In Poland, the Community of Sant'Egidio, under the patronage of the Polish Episcopal Council for Migration, promotes a Week of Prayer for Refugees. It started on the 106th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, it will end on 4 October. Prayers will be held in several cities in the country.
The Community of Sant'Egidio calls to pray for those who - as Pope Francis has written - were like Jesus Christ forced to flee at the time of Herod. The Holy Father reminds us once again that when we talk about migrants and displaced persons, all too often we stop at statistics.
“But it is not about statistics, it is about real people! (….) And knowing their stories, we will be able to understand them. We will be able to understand, for example, that the precariousness that we have come to experience as a result of this pandemic is a constant in the lives of displaced people.” the Pope has stated in his message for the Migrant's Day.
The Week of Prayer "Dying of Hope" is one of the initiatives of reflection and prayer the Community has organised in many European cities since 2015 when 3771 migrants died in the Mediterranean. We want to remember more than 41,000 lives that have been lost - from 1990 to present - in the "journeys of hope", making memory of names and stories.
