This essay intends, through a thematic reading, to trace the contribution of canon law studies to the pastoral care of migrants, privileging most of all the organizational dimension. To understand the specific structures that the Church has worked out in the field of the care of migrants it is necessary to begin from the preconditions and foundations: those are found in the unavoidable reference to the theological and ecclesiological data. The organization of the pastoral care regarding the migrants can be understood starting precisely from the vision of the church proposed by the Vatican Council II, and adopted by the Latin and Oriental Codes that has traduced it in a canonistic language. Even though the canonical regulations have not formalized a proper law to a specific pastoral care, the organizational set-up has recorded, besides the new spirit of the Council, a series of universal norms and inspirational and regulatory principles of specific pastoral structures for migrants - especially that of the personal organization next to the territorial one. The article takes into account not only the contribution of Latin canon lawyers, but opens also to Oriental canon law studies, which after the promulgation of the Code for the Oriental Churches in 1990, has enriched the doctrinal panorama with issues that are specifically Oriental - just think of the pastoral care of members of Oriental churches in diaspora - and has called Latin and Oriental canonists to debate on inter-ecclesial issues old and recent.

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church role literature review migrants experience diaspora