Embracing, Protecting, and Loving the Stranger: A Roman Catholic Theology of Migration

From its very beginnings, observing the Jewish injunction of hospitality for the stranger (Deut 10:17–19; 24:17–18)1 and remembering Jesus’ foreign ancestors (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Beersheba), his birth far from home (Lk 2:1–7), his and his family’s escape to Egypt as refugees (Mt 2:13–14), his ministry as a homeless and itinerant preacher with nowhere to lay his head (Lk 9:58), his fate as an unwelcome stranger in his own country (Jn 1:11), and his self-identification with the stranger (Mt 25:35), Christianity has consistently inculcated philoxenia, that is, love of and hospitality to aliens, strangers, and migrants.