Academy

The migrant population already represents 3% of the world total according to the Osservasalute 2016 Report of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. The vulnerability of this entire population, their right to health, climate change and critical cases such as Mexico and Venezuela are some of the aspects dealt with in the international seminar “Healing migrants to heal the world: future scenarios for peace-building” organized by the Global Permanent Forum on Migration and Health (Global PerForMHealth) at the Pontificia Università Lateranense on 4 and 5 March. The objective, among others, was to dismantle myths such as that of the invading migrant, since the number of migrants perceived by society is much higher than the actual number, or that of the migrant who transmits diseases, given that studies show the opposite.

The Global PerForMHealth is formed by the Rielo Institute for Integral Development, the Agenzia di Ricerche e Legislazione (AREL), the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, the Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla (Messico), the Hospital-UTPL (Ecuador), the University of Cuenca (Ecuador) and the Ministry of Public Health of Ecuador. It is an open discussion platform on migration, the physical and mental health of migrants, public health, emergency relief and related social, political and economic issues. Its aim is to create an international network that studies all aspects of migration from a multidisciplinary approach.

With this seminar, given by experts from organizations and universities from different countries, Global PerForMHealth wants to disseminate accurate information, based on verified data, which neutralize the misinformation and instrumentalization that today is made of the phenomenon, which favors exclusion and prevents taking advantage of all the potential, including labor, of this population sector. As an example of this, the WHO-Europe 2018 report, published in January 2019, shows that migrants in Europe only represent an average of 10% of the population, when the social perception is that they are 3 or 4 times more. The former Italian Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, emphatically warned of this distance between perception and reality.

Similarly, the WHO report shows that the risk of migrants transmitting contagious diseases is very low and that a large proportion of migrants who are currently HIV-positive contracted the disease once they arrived in Europe. Maurizio Marceca, president of the Italian Society of Migration Medicine, spoke about it and about health scaremongering when he stated that sometimes the media disseminate data and visions without scientific basis that construct distorted narratives about the health of migrants.

For his part, Carlos Durán, Ecuador’s Deputy Minister of Health, explained how his country is dealing with the health care for the great Venezuelan migratory flow that has moved to Ecuador and the countries of the region. Starting from a legal framework that defends the right to migration and in a joint effort with the rest of the health ministers, Ecuador is offering important resources to guarantee the health of such a massive group of displaced people.

Bernardo Vega, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Cuenca (Ecuador), also spoke about this, for whom the humanitarian crisis of the displacement of Venezuelans will soon surpass Syria. According to Vega, Ecuadorian health personnel are not yet prepared to assume a health emergency of such caliber and that the path of tightening immigration laws, assumed by other countries, only aggravates the problem.

Monsignor Guerino de Tora, president of the Italian episcopal commission for migration, underlined the globalization of the phenomenon of human mobility, without which today’s society cannot be understood. The rector of the Autonomous Popular University of the State of Puebla (Mexico), Emilio Baños, defined the person as “homo migrans” and today’s world as “migrant world”. According to Baños, the migratory crisis is a reflection of an anthropological crisis that should lead nations to rethink the concept of sovereignty and borders in relation to the human person, becoming aware of the historical co-responsibility that developed countries have with those countries that now send out their own children.

In this sense, the rector of the Pontifical Lateran University, Vincenzo Buonomo, emphasized that human mobility must be truly governed and not faced as an emergency or from borders. Along these lines, Enrico Letta attributed the migration crisis in Europe to the imbalance between national and multilateral instruments. For his part, Jesús Fernández, recalled the words of its founder, Fernando Rielo, who together with Caritas initiated the first polyambulatory for migrants in Rome in 1983, that “migration is a question of social justice because the person in this desperate condition aspires, rather than being helped compassionately, to be recognized that the world belongs to him, beyond each border”.

From the academy, Catherine Withol, director emeritus of France’s National Center for Scientific Research, noted the contradiction between the reality of migration as a modern trait and the strong inequalities of movement suffered by many people. This requires more migration policies and not the closure of borders, which does not solve the root of the problem, according to Corrado Bonifazi, director of Italy’s National Research Council.

The importance of civil society in the relationship between health and migration was put on the table by Ranieri Guerra, Assistant Director-General of WHO, and also by Salvatore Geraci of Caritas Rome, who underlined the active role of medical and voluntary organisations.

The mental health of the migrant, as one of the critical points, was addressed by Luigi Janiri, co-president of Global PerForMHealth and professor at the Università Cattolica, who spoke of the increased risk in the second generation and migrants. Likewise, Richard Mollia, from Harvard University, presented the high incidence of post-traumatic stress syndrome in this population.

The increase of unaccompanied minor migrants in Central American migration to the United States and all the health risks they suffer in their migratory journey to Mexico, the most dangerous country for migrants, was exposed by Lourdes Rosas, researcher at the Autonomous Popular University of the State of Puebla.

An important experience was that presented by the Italian Football Federation with the so-called “progettosete” which consists of a regional and national football tournament aimed at refugee minors in Italy and which is giving positive results of social inclusion.

Other topics included climate change as one of the triggers of migration, the importance of the family and the influence of the media, through which an attempt was made to analyze the phenomenon of migration in all its complexity.

The seminar featured the premiere of Catherine MacGilvray’s documentary “Los sin voz” (The Voiceless), which tells the tragic migratory story of the Salvadoran people of Long Island (NY), where they constitute the largest community.

The need to reinforce interdisciplinary metaphysical thought and a “metaphysics with a living face” which will respond to the problems of the human person, without dogmatism or radicalism, appeared among the conclusions articulated by the president of the Seventh World Conference on Metaphysics, Rev. Jesús Fernández Hernández, at the closing session on October 27. The event brought together two hundred scholars and thinkers from thirty countries at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain, October 24-27, 2018.

In the opening address, Professor Jesús Conill of the University of Valencia, Spain stressed that philosophy had once again focused on human nature and the need for an enriched, updated concept of personhood superseding the interpretations proceeding from both traditionalism and scientism. This topic resurfaced at the Round Table on “Metaphysics and the Person,” where University of Valencia Professor Agustín Domingo Moratalla brought out the significance of the notion of the person for an adequate theory of justice and as a basis for bioethics and applied ethics in general. Professor Juana Sánchez-Gey of the Autonomous University of Madrid set forth Fernando Rielo’s vision of the person as “someone with awareness of Someone” who defines personhood and endows it with a spirit capable of union and commitment to the highest values.

At the Round Table on “Metaphysics, Science, and Therapy,” César Nombela, Professor of Microbiology at the Complutense University of Madrid and Honorary Rector of the Menéndez Pelayo International University, considered the search for truth as an ethical imperative for scientists which necessarily opens them to mystery. Julio Martínez, Rector of the Comillas Pontifical University commented on the twofold trajectory of moving through and beyond disciplines by way of the horizontal relation sciences-society and the philosophical-theological heights and depths of sciences open to ultimate reality. Similarly, Mauro Mantovani, Rector of the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome, affirmed that a multidisciplinary approach is a “weak” form of collaboration among sciences and that a transdisciplinary focus is an educational task in order to grasp that metaphysics is not an alternative to anthropology (Fides et Ratio, 83).

Regarding the relation between metaphysics and culture, Ángel Galindo, former Rector of the Pontifical University of Salamanca, lamented the current separation between ethics and aesthetics and stated that art and ethics are not neutral, for they convey a sense of the meaning of existence. Ricardo Piñero of the University of Navarra, Spain set forth the metaphysical values of the Christ of Velázquez and of Don Quijote, in terms of his reading of Unamuno and Rielo. The two creations are more than works of art, but permit a true encounter with the very humanity of Christ, bringing us to feel his presence and powerful reality.

In the closing address, José María López Sevillano, President of the Idente School, advocated a metaphysics involving a living face and personal commitment, wherein the absolute model, proposed by Fernando Rielo, is the genetic conception of the principle of relation—i.e., the Most Holy Trinity revealed by Christ, in whom all Truth, Methodology, and Life is manifest. From this point of departure we can arrive at a well-formed vision of reality in dialogue with every culture, mentality, science, art, or religion. For Rielo, Christ is the metaphysician par excellence.

In addition, other main speakers from France, Germany, and Argentina dealt with varied facets of the relation between metaphysics and theology and between metaphysics and education. Many papers were also presented by the other participants in the Conference—nearly two hundred in all—on topics related to the seven major areas of thought and culture included in the program.

Conference President Jesús Fernández announced that the Eighth World Conference on Metaphysics will be held at the Pontifical University of Salamanca in 2021 under the auspices of the Fernando Rielo Chair, which had been created there.

With a large number of registered students, on January 30, the Master’s Degree in Global Health and Migration was officially opened, which is actually the sixth edition of the Master’s Degree in Marginalization, Migration and Poverty Medicine, organized by the Fondazione Idente di Studi e di Ricerca and Caritas Roma since the nineties. This first week was held in the theater of the Casa Famiglia Villa Glori, in Rome. The program, a pioneer in Italy, is aimed mainly at doctors and nurses, and has surpassed expectations, because it has reached almost sixty participants from fourteen Italian provinces. After a few years of not being convened, the good reception that this edition has had demonstrates the need for training in this field, which was already known by the many people who have requested information in recent years.

Caritas Roma Director, Monsignor Enrico Feroci, spoke at the inauguration, emphasizing that “knowing, studying and sharing one’s experience and helping to understand problems is the pedagogy of charity. A pastoral style that is the basis of the Caritas act and from which the experience of this master was born”. Then Enrico Bayo intervened, on behalf of the Fondazione Idente di Studi e di Ricerca, who welcomed all the participants. This round of initial greetings concluded by Luján González, also on behalf of the Fondazione Idente and the Rielo Institute for Integral Development, underlining the importance of this training initiative to serve so many migrant and refugee population, for whom the health service is not guaranteed and remembering Fernando Rielo, promoter of these entities and this line of training, research and health care, which began with the creation of the Poliambulatorio de Roma, together with Caritas, in 1983.

Representatives of the Pontifical Dicastery for Integral Human Development and the International Organization for Migration also took part in this opening ceremony. It was followed by a session on “Global health, social determinants and inequality: meaning and experiences” in which several doctors from the Public Health Institute of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) intervened, as well as the presentation on “Immigration policies in Italy: news and prospective “, by Oliviero Forti, of Caritas Italia.

The whole day and in-person week is being coordinated by Salvatore Geraci, responsible for the health area of Caritas Roma, in a very pleasant and familiar atmosphere in which we can perceive the sensibility and receptivity of the participants to acquire vision and technical tools to assume responsibilities and projects, in the wide field of health care for the most vulnerable population.

The master’s degree is developed blended in four face-to-face weeks throughout 2018 with the following calendar and themes:

Lesson Schedule

1st week: Rome, January 29 – February 2, 2018 “The health of immigrants: protection and critical areas”

2nd week: Rome, March 19 – 23, 2018 “The principles of global health, social determinants and inequalities” Focus: the health of Roma, Sinti and Camelists

3rd week: Bologna, 2 – 6 July 2018 “Politics, Anthropology and Human Sciences for Health” Focus: Ethics and Solidarity

4th week: Rome, 24-28 September 2018 “The health of asylum seekers and refugees: safeguards and critical areas” Focus: invisible wounds