Marseille, France
Reuters
Pope Francis on Saturday condemned “belligerent nationalisms” and called for a pan-European response to migration to stop the Mediterranean, where thousands have drowned, from becoming “the graveyard of dignity”.
Immigration issues dominated his 27-hour trip to Marseille, a French port that for centuries has been a crossroads of cultures and religions.
French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron meet with Pope Francis, on the occasion of the Mediterranean Meetings, in Marseille, France, on 23rd September, 2023. PICTURE: Vatican Media/Handout via Reuters
POPE SAYS COUNTRIES SHOULD NOT “PLAY GAMES” WITH UKRAINE ON ARMS AID
Pope Francis suggested on Saturday that some countries were “playing games” with Ukraine by first providing weapons and then considering backing out of their commitments.
Francis made his comments aboard the plane returning from a trip to the French port city of Marseilles. He was responding to a reporter’s question about whether he was frustrated that his efforts to bring about peace had not succeeded. He has sent an envoy, Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, to Kyiv, Moscow, Washington and Beijing to meet with leaders there.
He said he did feel “some frustration” and then began talking randomly about the arms industry and the war.
“It seems to me that the interests in this war are not just those related to the Ukrainian-Russian problem but to the sale of weapons, the commerce of weapons,” he said.
“We should not play games with the martyrdom of this people. We have to help them resolve things…I see now that some countries are moving backwards, not wanting to give (Ukraine) arms. A process is starting in which the martyr certainly will be the Ukrainian people and that is an ugly thing,” he said.
Asked for a clarification, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the pope was not taking a stand on whether countries should continue to send weapons to Ukraine or stop sending them.
“It was a reflection on the consequences of the arms industry: the Pope, with a paradox, was saying that those who traffic in weapons never pay the consequences of their choices but leave them to be paid by people, like the Ukrainians, who have been martyred,” Bruni said.
A number of countries, including the United States, face internal political pressure to stop or curtail spending on weapons sent to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appealed to US lawmakers on Thursday for continued support amid doubts by some Republicans over whether Congress should approve more aid.
Francis has condemned the international arms trade in general but said last year that it is morally legitimate for nations to supply weapons to Ukraine to help the country defend itself against Russian aggression.
– PHILIP PULLELLA, Aboard the papal plane/Reuters.
On Friday, he said migrants who risk drowning at sea “must be rescued” because doing so was “a duty of humanity” and that those who impede rescues commit “a gesture of hate”.
Francis doubled down in a long speech on Saturday morning when he concluded a church conference on Mediterranean issues.
“There is a cry of pain that resonates most of all, and it is turning the Mediterranean, the ‘mare nostrum’, from the cradle of civilization into the ‘mare mortuum’, the graveyard of dignity: it is the stifled cry of migrant brothers and sisters,” he said, using Latin terms meaning “our sea” and “sea of death”.
On the flight to Marseilles on Friday, Francis was moved as he was shown a picture of a migrant child by Reuters photographer Yara Nardi. The photo was a close-up shot of the eyes of 18-month old Prince, who with his mother Claudine Nsoe, had arrived by sea on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa from North Africa.
Nardi, who was travelling with the Pope, showed the large-sized picture to Francis as he was greeting media correspondents during the flight from Rome on Friday.
“He was immediately moved, as soon as I took it out of the envelope,” Nardi said, adding silence fell among the aircraft’s passengers and Francis had commented: “They keep them in Libyan detention camps, then they throw them to sea…He shook my hand and kept the photo.”
President Emmanuel Macron, other government officials and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde attended a papal Mass on Saturday afternoon for 50,000 people who packed the city’s Velodrome stadium. Authorities said another 100,000 lined his route to the stadium.
Left-wing politicians have criticised Macron over his decision to attend the Mass, saying it violates strict separation of state and faith, known as laïcité. He said he was attending out of respect for the pope.
At the conference on Saturday morning, Francis called on people to “hear the cries of pain” rising from migrants seeking a better life.
“How greatly we need this at the present juncture, when antiquated and belligerent nationalisms want to make the dream of the community of nations fade!” he said. He did not name any countries.
Pope Francis gestures, as he holds a mass at the Velodrome Stadium, as a part of his journey on the occasion of the Mediterranean Meetings in Marseille, France, on 23rd September, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Yara Nardi
Governments in several European countries, including Italy, Hungary, and Poland, are led by outspoken opponents of immigration. The Pope also contested those who characterise migration as an “invasion,” saying it is a long-term issue that would have to be met with compassion.
He called for an expansion of legal paths to immigration with emphasis on accepting those fleeing war, hunger and poverty, rather than on “preservation of one’s own wellbeing”.
According to UN Refugee Agency UNHCR, about 178,500 migrants have come to Europe via the Mediterranean this year, while about 2,500 died or went missing.
While Francis has said often that migrants should be shared among the 27 EU countries, his overall openness towards migrants, including once calling their exclusion “scandalous, disgusting and sinful,” has riled conservative politicians.
The Pope, who was returning to Rome after the Mass, began the day by visiting a centre for the needy in Marseilles’ Saint Mauront district, one of France’s poorest, run by the order of nuns founded by Saint Mother Teresa.
