Fr. Lombardi editorial: "Suffering without a name"

The latest tragic shipwreck at sea of a large number of migrants and refugees between Africa and Europe has quite justly aroused widespread and profound shock.

Certainly many hundreds of unknown people have died in the Mediterranean in recent months, and thousands in recent years, and it reminds us of the tens of thousands of Vietnamese boat people who lost their lives in the sea in the early months of 1979. Fleeing from famine, from terrible poverty, from oppression, from violence, from war… at the risk of dying in the waves without a trace, not even a record of their names. On many occasions, recently, we have spoken of suffering “without a name”. Compassion compels us not to forget, but to remember, as we do when facing other unspeakable tragedies of humanity, a story that belongs to us, in solidarity with the poor of the earth.

The Jewish people understood it perfectly when they erected the Yad Vashem memorial, “the memorial of names”. It was there that Pope Benedict XVI delivered a meditation that came to mind recently when confronted with the death of so many innocent and unknown victims. “They lost their lives, but they will never lose their names: these are indelibly etched in the hearts of their loved ones, their surviving fellow prisoners, and all those determined never to allow such an atrocity to disgrace mankind again. Most of all, their names are forever fixed in the memory of Almighty God.”
“May their suffering never be denied, belittled or forgotten! And may all people of goodwill remain vigilant in rooting out from the heart of man anything that could lead to tragedies such as this!”

Eradicate the absurd hate that led to the Shoah, but also work now to eradicate the injustice, indifference and egoism that lead too many people to vanish beneath the waves in search of a more humane life. God remembers them, let us remember them, too.