WHO Chief Rebukes Bishop’s Migration Remarks, Labels ‘Invader’ Rhetoric Dehumanizing

By: Staff Writer | Borkena

NAIROBI, Kenya — Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus criticized remarks by conservative Catholic Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who called migration to Europe an “invasion,” saying such language dehumanizes people fleeing conflict and hardship.

In a post on X, Tedros said he read the bishop’s remarks “with a heavy heart,” arguing that calling human beings “invaders” takes away their “faces, their names, their stories,” and warned that “history teaches us where that road leads.”

The WHO chief was responding to widely shared interview clips of Bishop Schneider, a traditionalist Catholic prelate serving as auxiliary bishop in Kazakhstan, who has repeatedly argued that large-scale migration to Europe is an orchestrated effort to undermine the continent’s Christian identity.

In interviews published by conservative Catholic and European media outlets in 2025 and 2026, Schneider repeatedly argued that migration to Europe is “an orchestrated political action” aimed at suppressing Europe’s Christian identity. He has described the phenomenon as an “invasion” and linked it to what he considers a broader agenda of cultural transformation.

“The people arriving on Europe’s shores are not an army. They are families fleeing war, hunger, and despair,” Tedros wrote, adding that migrants include “Christians and Muslims alike, mothers carrying children, young people who buried their dreams to survive.”

He said portraying migration as “a plot against a continent” ignores both evidence and migrants’ humanity. Tedros also used Christian teachings to challenge the bishop’s framing, writing that Europe’s Christian heritage “is not defended by fear. It is defended by living it,” and cited the biblical passage, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” which he described as “not a political slogan; it is the Gospel itself.”

While acknowledging that “borders don’t matter” is not his position, Tedros said migration should be managed “with order, fairness, and honesty about its pressures.” However, he distinguished between border management and rhetoric targeting migrants.

“There is a difference between managing migration and demonising migrants,” he wrote. “The first is policy; the second is a wound to our shared humanity. Compassion is not weakness, and fear is not faith. May we choose to see people, not plots.”

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