Pope Francis is travelling to the French port city of Marseille to join Catholic bishops in a meeting focusing on the Mediterranean and migration.
For Francis, the shocking scenes of men, women and children packed into a refugee center in Lampedusa have underscored that migration as a phenomenon must be tackled jointly. The future, he said this past weekend about his upcoming trip to Marseille, “will only be prosperous if it is built on fraternity, putting human dignity, real people and especially the most needy, first.
“The message that he is conveying is that the Mediterranean is our responsibility,” said Cardinal Michael Czerny, the Vatican’s top migration expert and himself a refugee. “In other words, you can’t look at it as each one has a bit of coastline and is responsible for that bit. There’s a collective responsibility which is largely being neglected.”
Unlike many other French cities where foreigners tend to live on the outskirts, in Marseille migrants and their descendants of a variety of backgrounds – Italians, Spaniards and Armenians from Europe; people from France’s former colonies in North Africa, West Africa and the Comoros Islands -- have settled in the city center, opening shops and restaurants that contribute to the city’s reputation as a melting pot.
The encounter will bring together leaders of Marseille’s various faith groups – Muslims, Jews, Armenian and Orthodox Christians, and Roman Catholics -- and will feature testimony of migrants, rescue groups and the pope. The speakers’ list suggests a united voice to call for a culture of tolerance towards migrants, and lament that the Mediterranean has become, in Francis’ words, “the world’s biggest cemetery.
“I think given our complicated relationship with the church and with religion, we don’t expect this to have so much impact, to be honest,” Le Coz said. Young men who arrived in Italy amid the recent wave of migrants hope someone will listen. On a recent day, a group of young men from South Sudan stopped in Rome en route from Lampedusa towards the French border. One particularly tall man said he wanted to go to France to play basketball, another said he wanted to go to Britain to be a doctor. Their only belongings were the clothes on their backs; volunteers gave them shoes.
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