World News
British bishop seeks help for homeless Polish migrants
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LONDON (CNS) -- The increasing number of homeless Polish migrants sleeping on Britain's streets have prompted a Catholic bishop to urge parishes to do all that they can to help the destitute. An estimated 3,000 of the 600,000 Poles who have arrived in Britain to look for work since their country was admitted to the European Union in May 2004 are believed to be homeless. Another 45,000 are living in poverty or squalor while a further 100,000 are " in difficulty," according to the Barka Foundation, a Polish charity that has opened a London office to help Poles either return home or find work and housing in Britain. In a statement Sept. 12, Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue of Lancaster, England, called on Catholics to be generous toward such migrants. "I ask parishes to allow the use of halls so that migrants can meet with one another, deepen fellowship and find a place that they can call home," said the bishop, chairman of the Office for Refugee and Migration Policy of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.
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