Pope Francis has urged people to show compassion to migrants and refugees as he unveiled a new monument to migration in St Peter’s Square on Sunday.
The life-sized sculpture, known as Angels Unawares, is the work of Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz and depicts 140 migrants and refugees from different historical periods traveling on a boat including Mary and Joseph, Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and people from war-torn countries as well as Indigenous people.
In a message to an estimated 40,000 people in St Peter’s Square on Sunday – marked in the Catholic Church as the 105th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, the 82-year-old pontiff quoted from various texts from the Bible including from the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 after which he noted that “being compassionate means recognising the suffering of the other and taking immediate action to soothe, heal and save”.
The Pope said migrants, refugees, displaced persons and victims of trafficking “have become emblems of exclusion” in the world today, noting that “in addition to the hardships that their condition entails, they are often looked down upon and considered the source of all society’s ills”.
“Violent conflicts and all-out wars continue to tear humanity apart; injustices and discrimination follow one upon the other; economic and social imbalances on a local or global scale prove difficult to overcome. And above all it is the poorest of the poor and the most disadvantaged who pay the price.”
The Pope said today’s world was “increasingly becoming more elitist and cruel towards the excluded”.
“Developing countries continue to be drained of their best natural and human resources for the benefit of a few privileged markets,” he said. “Wars only affect some regions of the world, yet weapons of war are produced and sold in other regions which are then unwilling to take in the refugees produced by these conflicts. Those who pay the price are always the little ones, the poor, the most vulnerable, who are prevented from sitting at the table and are left with the “crumbs” of the banquet.”
As the Pope was speaking, there was news that at least seven migrants had drowned in shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea off Morocco, adding to the more than 2,300 migrants the International Organization for Migration says have died around the world this year.
