Safe and Legal Ways to France: FCEI’s President Applauded

ITALIAN VERSION

NEV

Rome (NEV), January 19th, 2017 – “Yesterday evening, before celebrating the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in the Cathedral of Albano, I heard that humanitarian corridors, ecumenically promoted also by France, will be opened. That is great news!”. In a letter sent to the President of the FPF, Pastor François Clavairoly, Pastor Luca Maria Negro, President of FCEI (Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy) ‒ one of the promoters of the humanitarian corridors from Lebanon together with the Community of Sant’Egidio and the Waldensian Board ‒ wanted to emphasize the ecumenical grounds of this “good practice”, which has already brought to Italy 500 vulnerable refugees, most of them Syrians via a legal and safe way.
Yesterday, the French Prime Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve made known the opening of legal and safe ways also to enter France. These corridors will be ecumenically achieved with the support of the French Protestants and the Community of Sant’Egidio.

“The theme of this Year’s Prayer Week, the reconciliation, invites us to be together ‘witnesses of reconciliation’ in a world that continues to build walls ‒ Pastor Negro wrote in his letter. In the introduction to the Week materials signed by the leaders of the Christian churches in Italy, we would like to mention, just as an example of a common witness of reconciliation, the humanitarian corridors project that we launched together with our ecumenical partners a year ago. A positive experience that unfortunately has not yet been replicated in other European countries. Thus, the announcement of your corridors has filled this expectation since it is a sign of hope in the direction of an open and solidarity-based Europe which is able to welcome and integrate. “