EXHIBIT PRESENTATION:
Saturday, January 13, 2018
3:15 pm | Auditorium, second floor

Guided tour schedule:

Friday, January 12  
7:30 pm,  8:30 pm

Saturday, January 13
10:00 am, 11:00 am, 12:00 pm, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 4:00 pm, 5:00 pm, 6:00 pm  

Sunday, January 14
11:00 am, 12:00 pm, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 4:00 pm, 5:00 pm, 6:00 pm

Stories of immigration, hospitality, and changed lives

Exhibit Panels (PDF)

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The present global migration can certainly be explained by several key factors. Poverty, hunger, violence, disregard of human rights and the search for economic and intellectual fulfillment unavailable at home are among the root causes of this exodus. And any approach to migration which ignores its root causes, thus nurturing an ideological attitude, is short-sighted and will ultimately fail. People do not go through the trauma of uprooting themselves and their families for frivolous reasons. On the one hand, neither abstract legalism nor nativism are adequate responses to the question posed by the presence of immigrants. On the other hand, a naive, universalistic openness to immigration, which is forgetful of the profound and complex challenges which a society hosting and welcoming the immigrants has to face, is also not enough. Therefore, there is no doubt that migration poses a huge and complex challenge to political institutions and to goverment and private agencies which are called to deal with it.  

However, outside politics and general policies, the real question that concerns each one of us, in our day-to-day life, is not how we face immigration, but how we face immigrants, real human beings with needs, talents, limits, and expectations. “Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity. They are children, women, and men who leave, or who are forced to leave their home for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having, but above all, for being more.” (Pope Francis for the 2014 Day of Migrants and Refugees).

When this personal dimension is put at the forefront, we may find, as the exhibit shows, surprising stories of immigration and hospitality going to the heart of the problem and bearing witness to an “impossible unity.”

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