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Pope Defends Migrants’ Plight in Marseille Ahead of Meeting with Macron
Pope Defends Migrants’ Plight in Marseille Ahead of Meeting with Macron
(about 5 hours later)
Pope Francis lamented on Friday that the Mediterranean Sea had become a “huge cemetery” for migrants attempting to reach Europe, on the first day of his visit in the port city of Marseille, France, where he is expected to meet with President Emmanuel Macron.
Pope Francis lamented on Friday that the Mediterranean Sea had become a “huge cemetery” for migrants attempting to reach Europe, on the first day of his visit in the port city of Marseille, France, where he is expected to meet with President Emmanuel Macron.
Francis, who is attending the closing session of a weeklong gathering of bishops, youth activists and representatives of other religions from around the Mediterranean Sea, said the world needed to react “with deeds, not words.” He also castigated the “fanaticism of indifference” toward migrants — a recurring theme of his papacy.
Francis, who is attending the closing session of a weeklong gathering of bishops, youth activists and representatives of other religions from around the Mediterranean Sea, said the world needed to react “with deeds, not words.” He also castigated the “fanaticism of indifference” toward migrants — a recurring theme of his papacy.
“Let us not get used to considering shipwrecks as news stories and deaths at sea as numbers,” the pope said at a memorial for sailors and migrants lost at sea, in front of Notre-Dame de la Garde, a basilica with sweeping views of the Marseille harbor.
“Let us not get used to considering shipwrecks as news stories and deaths at sea as numbers,” the pope said at a memorial for sailors and migrants lost at sea, in front of Notre-Dame de la Garde, a basilica with sweeping views of the Marseille harbor.
“They are names and surnames, they are faces and stories, they are broken lives and shattered dreams,” he added.
“They are names and surnames, they are faces and stories, they are broken lives and shattered dreams,” he added.
Francis has long defended the plight of migrants trying to reach Europe from North and sub-Saharan Africa, and he was widely expected to make it a major theme of his trip to Marseille, which is not an official state visit to France.
Still, hot on the heels of a state visit by King Charles III and Queen Camilla of Britain, who visited Bordeaux on Friday, Mr. Macron has seized the opportunity to see the pontiff. They are scheduled to meet on Saturday before attending a giant Mass at Marseille’s soccer stadium.
“Politicians love to be seen with the pope,” Isabelle de Gaulmyn, a top editor at La Croix, France’s leading Catholic newspaper, said — especially Mr. Macron, a political disrupter who has long been fascinated by Francis’ willingness to shake things up in the church.
Meeting the pope, a moral authority on the issue of migration, “will also help him lean leftward a bit,” Ms. de Gaulmyn said of Mr. Macron, a centrist who often tilts right, including on the issue of migration.
Francis once took Syrian refugees with him on the papal plane, and his first official trip outside Rome, in 2013, was to Lampedusa, the Italian island that has become a gateway to Europe for many migrants and where a recent surge in arrivals has underscored the continent’s inability to agree on a common migration and asylum policy.
Immigration has become a political flashpoint for European governments, especially those facing strong far-right parties.
Gérald Darmanin, Mr. Macron’s interior minister, said this week that France would help manage the flow of migrants arriving in Lampedusa but would not take in any. He said France would welcome asylum seekers if they fit the right criteria but insisted many did not.
“We need to fight illegal immigration in Europe, in France and in Italy, and we aren’t going to stem a flow — which affects our integration abilities — by taking in more people,” Mr. Darmanin told TF1 television.
Since 2014, over 28,000 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe have been recorded dead or missing, according to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency. There have been nearly 180,000 sea arrivals in 2023 so far, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
“Too many people fleeing conflict, poverty and environmental disasters in search of a better future find in the waves of the Mediterranean Sea the ultimate rejection,” Francis said on Friday.
“And so this beautiful sea has become a huge cemetery,” he added, as he held a minute of silence with Catholic officials, city representatives and an interfaith group of religious leaders.
In Marseille, Francis thanked aid groups that rescue shipwrecked migrants, calling government efforts to impede their missions “gestures of hate.”
François Thomas, the president of SOS Méditerranée, one of the aid groups present at the ceremony, said the number of deaths had increased in recent months, partly because more migrants attempt the crossings during clement summer weather, and partly because of external factors like the ongoing chaos in Libya, a government crackdown in Tunisia and an Italian law that limits the time rescue vessels can spend at sea.
Francis’ visit is important, Mr. Thomas said, because he is one of the few global leaders who has unequivocally defended migrants.
“He has always had a message of solidarity, of fraternity on this issue and on the Mediterranean tragedy,” he said. “We have to have the courage to say that we can’t let people drown at Europe’s doors.”
Marseille is a port city shaped by immigration from European countries like Armenia, Italy, and Spain, as well as from France’s former African colonies.
It is plagued by pockets of extreme poverty, strained social services and deadly violence related to drug trafficking, but it is also one of France’s most cosmopolitan cities, a predominantly working-class mix of ethnic and religious communities.
On Saturday, Francis and Mr. Macron will attend the closing session of the gathering of bishops, known as the Mediterranean Meetings, before talking one-on-one.
They will then head to the Vélodrome, Marseille’s famed soccer stadium, where tens of thousands will celebrate Mass, with about 100,000 more expected outside.
It is not uncommon for French leaders to attend religious ceremonies such as funerals, but Mr. Macron will be the first French president to attend a papal Mass since 1980.
France has a strong tradition of secularism, and Mr. Macron’s expected presence at the ceremony is ruffling some feathers — especially after a contentious decision to ban the full-length robe worn by some Muslim students in schools.
“No, Mr. President, it’s not your place to go to the Pope’s mass,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist leader, said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “The secular state neither recognizes nor subsidizes any religion.”
Mr. Macron’s office pointed out that he had attended other religious events as president, like an iftar dinner organized by Muslim organizations. And he has insisted that he will not participate in the Mass.
“I won’t go as a Catholic; I’ll go as the president of the French Republic,” Mr. Macron said last week, adding: “I’ll go out of courtesy and respect.”
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.
