Hudson Catholic parish considers taking in 21 Syrian refugees

Church leaders and members of St. Patrick Parish in Hudson have been praying overtime in the past couple of weeks as they decide whether to welcome five Syrian refugee families into their community next summer.

The Rev. John Gerritts promised to learn more about the refugee crisis and reach out to parish leadership after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called earlier this fall to ask if his congregation would host the refugees, who are living in a camp in Turkey.

“This is something we’ve never done before,” said Gerritts, who is the church’s pastor. “It’s nothing we were looking to do. It’s not a part of our immediate mission.”

Parish trustee Claire Zajac said some churchgoers perceive the refugees as possibly dangerous to the community.

continue at TwinCities.com

This is a commendable undertaking to take in these displaced Christian families.... oh wait:

Church members are overwhelmingly supportive of the refugee work the Council of Churches does, Walen said. He receives a few letters a year from individuals who say they’re worried about new Muslim settlers in their communities, but most welcome the newcomers.

Ok... well if anyone is interested in also helping Syrian Christians as well, there are organizations out there to enable your charity.  I'm not necessarily against humanitarian efforts, but I hope Wisconsin Catholics can also support Christians in the process as well.

Stream readers know that Christians in the Middle East are the victims of the worst religious persecution on earth. As Jonathan Witt documented here, the UN’s failure to make refugee camps safe is allowing intolerant Sunni Muslims — who share a creed with ISIS — to violently “cleanse” such camps of Christians. These helpless, unarmed survivors of ISIS’s murder squads cannot even reach the “first safe” countries that could welcome them, and instead live in windblown tents and unheated metal storage containers in places like Mt. Sinjar, just miles away from ISIS-controlled territory. More than a million Christians were driven at gunpoint from Iraq during the U.S. occupation of that country, and now the Obama administration is banning Iraqi Christians from even visiting America, and explicitly excluding Christians as victims of ISIS’s genocide.