Pope Francis wanted to have this Friday, from Marseille, a special memory for the migrants who died in the Mediterranean, because said city is “the door, the window, it is everything…” in said sea. However, he also regretted that it has become “a huge cemetery, where numerous brothers and sisters are deprived even of the right to have a grave,” while “the only thing to be buried is human dignity.”
The Pontiff spoke these words at the beginning of a two-day visit to this cosmopolitan and multicultural city in the south of France. After being received by the French Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, he visited the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Guard, the “Good Mother” as the Marseillais call her, to perform a Marian prayer with the clergy. «We are gathered in memory of those who have not survived. We are not accustomed to considering shipwrecks as events and the dead as numbers. They are names and surnames. They are faces and stories. “They are broken lives and destroyed dreams,” he stressed to authorities, neighbors and journalists.
His trip to Marseille takes place in the middle of the migratory crisis in Italy, after the recent massive arrival of migrants to the island of Lampedusa. Indeed, Jorge Mario Bergoglio visited the island on his first trip as Pontiff in July 2013. It was in Lampedusa, where he cried out against “the globalization of indifference.”
This Friday, ten years later, he urged the international community to rescue migrants shipwrecked in the Mediterranean. «We cannot resign ourselves to seeing human beings treated as exchange merchandise. “We cannot witness the tragedies of shipwrecks caused by repugnant smuggling and by the fanaticism of indifference,” the Pope added.
“Gestures of hate”
«People who are in danger of drowning must be rescued. It is a duty of humanity. It is a duty of civilization,” Francis insisted, in an event surrounded by representatives of other religions and in front of the Mediterranean coast. He also took the opportunity to thank those associations and non-governmental organizations that rescue migrants in the Mediterranean. «Many times they prevent you from going because the boat is missing something, it is missing something else… They are the gestures of hatred against the brother, disguised as ‘balance’. Thank you for everything you do,” he said.
Coinciding with the Pope’s visit to Marseille, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) and SOS Méditerranée, one of the most active NGOs in this matter, warned that the humanitarian crisis continues to be deadly in the Mediterranean. According to their data, 28,000 people have died in this sea since 2014.
The Pontiff will close this Saturday the so-called Mediterranean Meetings, a festival that brings together bishops and young people from coastal countries in the area and which wishes to promote, according to him, “itineraries of collaboration and integration around ‘Mare Nostrum’, with especially to the migratory phenomenon. On his last day in Marseille, he will also take a popemobile tour to greet the people of Marseille and will celebrate a mass at the Stade Velodrome, which will be attended by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Francis is the first Pontiff to visit Marseille in almost 500 years. The last to visit this Mediterranean city was Pope Clement VII in 1533.
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