Pope Francis has denounced what he called Europe’s indifference to migrants who risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean, saying their exclusion was "scandalous, disgusting and sinful."
Before a crowd of an estimated 50,000 people in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis on Sunday (October 9) made one of the strongest statements yet in support of migrants. Departing from his prepared script, he criticized Europe’s treatment of migrants, saying it was "sinful" and "criminal".
"The exclusion of migrants is scandalous," Francis told the crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the canonizations of an Italian bishop and an Italian-born missionary.
"(Migrants) are left to die in front of us," he continued, making the Mediterranean "the largest cemetery in the world."
"(Their) exclusion … is disgusting, it is sinful. It is criminal not to open doors to those who are needy. No, we exclude them, we send them away to a 'lager'," he said, referring to the German word used for concentration camps during the Second World War.
"Do we welcome (migrants) as brothers, or do we exploit them?," Francis continued in his remarks, in which he also referred to refugees fleeing Ukraine.
The pope said that the two men who were made saints had shown the importance of "walking together." Don Giovanni Battista Scalabrini was a bishop who founded an order to help Italian emigrants in the 1880s while Artedime Zatti, a survivor of tuberculosis, emigrated a decade later to Argentina where he helped the sick and impoverished communities.
Scalabrini had shown "great vision" by looking forward "to a world and a Church without barriers, where no one was a foreigner," Francis said.
Also read: Vatican warns future Italian leaders: 'Helping migrants is an obligation'
At odds with future PM
The pope’s comments come as Giorgia Meloni prepares to take office as Italy’s new prime minister later this month. Meloni heads a right-wing coalition that has promised to limit migration with tighter asylum rules and more deportations.
Meloni has also advocated a naval blockade of North Africa to prevent migrants from making the Mediterranean crossing and a crackdown on migrant rescue ships.
Gorden Isler, spokesperson of the German rescue charity Sea-Eye, warned prior to the election of the far-right coalition in Italy that it would "obstruct rescue ships even more decisively" than under the hardline former interior minister, League Party leader Matteo Salvini, and that this would to an increase in deaths of migrants at sea.
Also read: Vatican warns future Italian leaders: 'Helping migrants is an obligation'
With AP, Reuters