Seminar with volunteers of Hope Workers Centre in Taiwan. Photo: Fr. Ryu Sun Jong Andrew.
Recently, I visited "Interwoven," an exhibition by Tomás Saraceno. Through delicate web-like structures and the resonance created by interconnected threads, the exhibition offered a simple yet profound insight: everything is connected. A small movement in one part of the web creates vibrations throughout the whole.
As I reflected on this experience, I found myself thinking about migrant workers in Taiwan. At first glance, environmental art and migrant labour seem unrelated - but the connection, once you see it, is hard to unsee.
Climate change is no longer only an environmental issue. Floods, droughts, rising sea levels, extreme weather - these forces continue to displace communities, pushing people to leave their homes in search of work and security. Not every migrant worker moves because of climate change. But environmental degradation increasingly shapes the conditions that make people vulnerable in the first place.
When migrant workers arrive in a new country, they often face language barriers, unequal labour conditions, social exclusion, and limited legal protection. And yet our economies depend heavily on their work - in factories, fisheries, agriculture, construction, hospitals, and private homes. Their contribution is essential. Their dignity is often overlooked.
This is what Laudato Si' keeps returning to. Pope Francis insists that "everything is connected" - not as a poetic phrase, but as a diagnosis. Environmental degradation and social injustice aren't separate crises. They run on the same logic. A system that exploits nature tends to exploit vulnerable people too.
Migrant workers rally in Taipei. Photo: Fr. Ryu Sun Jong Andrew.
The exhibition reminded me of this. Society is something like a spider's web - every person a thread within it. Weaken one thread, and the whole web feels it. Caring for the environment and protecting the dignity of migrant workers aren't two separate missions. They're one shared responsibility, calling us back into right relationship - with creation, with one another, with God.
The deeper question isn't how we fix nature or reform labour systems, as important as those things are. It's whether we're willing to really see that our lives are bound up with each other. Every choice we make - as consumers, as citizens, as people of faith sends ripples further than we can trace.
Columban Fr. Ryu Sun Jong Andrew, Taiwan.
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