Receiving and entertaining guests or strangers in a friendly and generous manner.
Usually there is an audience toward whom hospitality is directed: colleagues in a movement, or members of the same family, tribe, nationality or profession. Food, lodging and recreation are often provided.
The benefits of being hospitable range from strengthening the bonds of a scattered community creating a favourable image, to creating lasting friendships between individuals and nations.
We cannot insist too much on the duty of welcoming others -- a duty springing from human solidarity and Christian charity -- which is incumbent both on the families and the cultural organizations of the host countries. Centers of welcome and hostels must be multiplied, especially for youth. This must be done first to protect them from loneliness, the feeling of abandonment and distress, which undermine all moral resistance. This is also necessary to protect them from the unhealthy situation in which they find themselves, forced as they are to compare the extreme poverty of their homeland with the luxury and waste which often surround them. It should be done also to protect them against the subversive teachings and temptations to aggression which assail them, as they recall so much " unmerited misery". Finally, and above all, this hospitality should aim to provide them, in the warm atmosphere of a brotherly welcome, with the example of wholesome living, an esteem for genuine and effective Christian charity, an esteem for spiritual values. (Papal Encyclical, Populorum Progressio, 26 Mar 1967).
Hospitality is an open invitation to criminals to violate the donors and their property or to vagabonds, idlers and heretics to continue in their ways.