In this fifth video, we unpack some of the Church’s teaching on immigration in light of the infinite dignity of every human being and the universal destination of goods.
In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis—in a way I’d never seen before—took the principle of the universal destination of goods and applies it to the rights of migrants.
By invoking this principle, I believe Francis invited the Church to view the relationship between a state’s right to regulate its borders and a person’s right to migrate the same way we recognize the relationship between private property and the universal right to the goods of the earth.
“Nowadays, a firm belief in the common destination of the earth’s goods requires that this principle also be applied to nations, their territories and their resources. Seen from the standpoint not only of the legitimacy of private property and the rights of its citizens, but also of the first principle of the common destination of goods, we can then say that each country also belongs to the foreigner, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere” (Fratelli Tutti 124).
