Reject 'inflammatory rhetoric' on immigration, Jesuit urges

Published: 2007-03-14

SAN FRANCISCO (CNS) -- Look past the "inflammatory rhetoric" of the immigration debate to the root of the issue, urged Jesuit Father Stephen Privett, president of the University of San Francisco, in a Feb. 27 lecture at St. Rita Parish in Fairfax. "We will never resolve the issue of immigration if we do not address its underlying cause -- poverty," said Father Privett, the second speaker in a parish Lenten series based on Pope Paul VI's 1967 encyclical, "Populorum Progressio" ("The Progress of Peoples"). While the encyclical "does not offer us a specific set of guidelines" for dealing with immigration challenges, he said, it does "lay down some central principles and fundamental considerations that should guide our deliberations and discussions." Father Privett acknowledged that the debate is heated, but said Catholics should remember their faith must take into account scriptural insistence on the "radical interconnectedness" of human beings.

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