“During their fourth meeting, the two heads of state were able to talk about international issues and current crisis areas, such as the situation in Ukraine, Africa and Nagorno Karabakh. They also spoke about Argentina, the Pope’s country of origin,” the Government indicated. French in a statement given to the journalists accompanying the Pope, among them an envoy from Télam.
Then, Macron attended the mass with which the Pope concluded the visit at the local Velodrome stadium.
“Marseille has a great port and it is a great door that cannot be closed. Several Mediterranean ports, on the other hand, have been closed,” lamented the pontiff when participating in the forum called “Mediterranean Encounters” on immigration in the region together with bishops. and young people from all over Europe.
In a context of renewed tensions within the European Union over reception quotas for people arriving by sea, Francisco lamented that “two words have resonated, fueling people’s fears: invasion and emergency.”
The Pope, who arrived yesterday in Marseille and will return to Rome tonight, stated in any case that “he who risks his life at sea does not invade, he seeks shelter.”
“As for the emergency, the migratory phenomenon is not so much a momentary emergency, always opportune to stir up alarmist propaganda, but a reality of our time, a process that involves three continents around the Mediterranean and that must be governed wisely. clairvoyance: with a European responsibility capable of facing objective difficulties,” he claimed.
Last week, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had called for a “common responsibility” at the continental level to manage the mass of people arriving by sea when visiting the Italian island of Lampedusa, where the authorities denounce a situation of overpopulation of receptive structures due to the refusal of the rest of the countries to comply with the quota system.
“However, this situation is not a novelty in recent years, nor is this Pope coming from the other side of the world the first to warn of it with urgency and concern,” he added.
The Pope, along these lines, had already warned about “the globalization of indifference” towards migrants when, in July 2013, he had chosen to make his first trip as Pontiff outside Rome to the island of Lampedusa, a symbol of the arrival of people by the sea.
As Francis said today, “there is a cry of pain that is the loudest of all, and that is turning the mare nostrum into a mare mortum, the Mediterranean from the cradle of civilization to the tomb of dignity.”
“It is the stifled cry of the migrant brothers and sisters,” asserted Francisco, who yesterday had already considered “a duty of civilization” the savage of people who are shipwrecked in the Mediterranean when they seek to reach Europe.
“Against the terrible scourge of the exploitation of human beings, the solution is not to reject, but to guarantee, to the extent of each person’s possibilities, a large number of legal and regular entries, sustainable thanks to a fair reception by the European continent, within the framework of cooperation with the countries of origin,” Francisco emphasized.
In a message addressed to the entire continent, the Pope also maintained that “the mare nostrum cries out for justice, with its banks oozing with opulence, consumerism and waste, on the one hand, and poverty and precariousness, on the other.”
“In this case too, the Mediterranean is a mirror of the world, with the South turning towards the North; with so many developing countries, afflicted by instability, regimes, wars and desertification, looking to those who are wealthy, in a globalized world, in which we are all connected, but in which the differences have never been so profound,” he denounced.
As he had done in 2021 during his second visit to another of the symbols of Mediterranean immigration, the Greek island of Lesbos, the Pope called to avoid a “shipwreck of civilization” due to the immigration situation.
“The future will not be in closure, which is a return to the past, a setback on the path of history,” he stated in that context.
Thus, the Pope told European countries that “trying to save themselves now will become a tragedy tomorrow, when future generations will thank us if we have been able to create the conditions for an essential integration, while they will blame us if we have only we will have encouraged a fruitless assimilation”.
In a speech with which he sought to address the entire region, Francis also rejected the “anachronistic and belligerent nationalisms” that “want to put an end to the dream of the community of nations” and accused them of having “ambition for power.”
The pontiff also warned about the Marseille reality and maintained that “where there is precariousness there is crime: where there is material, educational, labor, cultural and religious poverty, the terrain for mafias and illegal trafficking is paved.”
After the speech at the forum, the Pope celebrated a mass at the Velodrome stadium, from where he said that “our metropolitan cities and the numerous European countries like France, where different cultures and religions coexist, are in this sense a great challenge against exasperations of individualism, against selfishness and closed-mindedness that produce loneliness and suffering.
In his homily, Francis highlighted the value of “human life, which today is rejected by so many people who emigrate, as well as by so many unborn children and so many abandoned elderly people.”
After the mass, which according to the Vatican was attended by around 50,000 people, the Pope flies directly to Rome, where he plans to land around 8:50 p.m. local time (3:50 p.m. in Argentina).
Source: Ambito
