Photo credit: SACBC
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.
Borkena reports that in a social media post, 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 posts of Bishop Schneider, a traditionalist Catholic prelate serving as auxiliary bishop in Kazakhstan, wh 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.
He said portraying migration as “a plot against a continent” ignores bothe evidence and migrants’ humanity. Tedos 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.”
