IF students at Brigidine College, Indooroopilly, get their Christmas wish, refugees and asylum seekers will have a warm welcome when they reach Australia.
In the last days of the 2011 school year the college community made the wish that this Christmas be one of welcoming.
The focus of the college’s Christmas liturgy was the Advent themes of waiting and welcoming with members of the college’s Justice and Democracy, and St Vincent de Paul Society groups leading the prayers which centred on refugees and asylum seekers.
Students were reminded that while they waited for Christmas, around the rest of the world more than 10 million refugees and 25 million displaced people were also waiting, but they were waiting for the chance to either go home and begin their lives all over again or to start a new life in a country that was safe.
Guest speaker during the liturgy Sha Hussein Hassani, a Hazara from Afghanistan, shared his story of how he came to Australia as an asylum seeker.
He reminded those present of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”.
Sha embodied the Brigidine spirit of hope for Christmas 2011 and for the years ahead.
Students were also reminded of Pope Benedict XVI’s comments in January 2011 that Jesus was also a refugee who was forced out of his own country and into Egypt because of persecution.
Each student also wrote messages of hope on travel tags to symbolise their wishes for refugees and asylum seekers to find hope and homes.
