News

The Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office has published resources to support the commemoration of the World Day of Migrants and Refugees on September 25.

Catholics across the country are being urged to consider how they can pray for and offer practical support to neighbours around the world as the Church marks the World Day of Migrants and Refugees this month.

Australia’s Catholic bishops have joined the bishops of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in calling for detainees on Manus Island and Nauru to be resettled in Australia – eight years after the advent of mandatory offshore detention.

Our elected representatives have returned home for Christmas without resolving the offshore detention crisis that confronts our country. It would seem that a majority in both houses of our Parliament favour laws and policies that will bring to an end the five-year saga of refugees and asylum-seekers who have had to put their lives on hold on Nauru and Manus Island.

The Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office welcomes the commitment made by the Australian Labor Party to address the global humanitarian plight of asylum-seekers by promising to increase Australia’s annual humanitarian intake of refugees to 27,000 by 2025.

On 19 July 2013, the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Peter O’Neill, signed the regional resettlement agreement between Australia and Papua New Guinea.