LAST weekend was an African weekend for me. You may remember some months ago I told you about the arrival of the Carmelites in my parish. Since then we have had several Carmelite-related visitors, including on Sunday, an entire pew of African women in full African dress.

They came from the old parish of our priest, Father Kevin, in Walworth, London, and their singing and dancing brought a whole new dimension to the Mass. They are also lovely people, as we found out talking to them afterwards.

If only those who complain about immigrants could have seen and heard them. They are an excellent example of why we should welcome strangers to our shores.

The “immigration problem” is not about what happens in Britain, it is about why so many people feel it necessary to cram themselves into lorries, cling to undercarriages of planes in flight and take to sea in overcrowded leaky boats. They are desperate to escape poverty and danger and who can blame them.

Solving that problem isn’t done by setting barriers, immigration quotas and deportations. Who are we to condemn them again to poverty and danger simply because of where they were born?

The solution was visible in the other half of my African weekend, on Saturday, when I shouted my support at the television as a British cyclist called Steve Cummings riding for a South African team, MTN-Qhubeka, won a stage of the Tour de France.

In cycling terms, that is second only to winning the Tour outright, or possibly the world championship. You may have seen him on the front page of your Sunday newspaper.

That’s him in the picture.

Cummings is 34, at an age when most professional cyclists are thinking about retiring. All his career he’s ridden in the world’s top teams in support of other riders. MTN-Qhubeka, the team that gave him his chance, is a second division team and the first-ever African-registered team in the Tour.

He rewarded their faith in him by winning the stage on Nelson Mandela Day, a day that passed almost unnoticed in Britain, but which is massively important in Africa. The plaudits and congratulations from the South African government down have been filling the internet ever since. Whatever happens between now and Paris, MTN-Qhubeka’s first Tour has been a big success.

There is more.

Look at Cummings’ five fingered salute on the finish line. That’s the Qhubeka symbol. Qhubeka is a charity that provides bicycles for disadvantaged African children, the same kind of work that is being done through the Bike Rescue Project here in York. Those bikes are the only way some children can get to school which is often a day’s walk and more from their homes.

If they are not helped, then today’s children could be tomorrow’s desperate refugees.

Cummings and MTN-Qhubeka aren’t just riding for themselves, they’re riding to promote a better life for some of the poorest people in the world.

This is why his victory is far more than a sporting success. It highlights the work Qhubeka is doing on a global platform. It is only by helping those that live in the poorest and most dangerous parts of the world that we will see an end to overcrowded boats and lorries and stowaways clinging to aeroplane undercarriages.

I hope someone with political or economic power was watching Steve Cummings on Saturday, understood the significance of his open raised hand and does his or her best to follow Qhubeka’s lead.

Then those who come to Britain shall come because they want to and not because they are driven to come.

I am also hoping the Yorkshire Britons of York made the African Britons of Walworth so welcome they will want to come back.