Pope Francis challenged French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders to open their ports to people fleeing hardship and poverty, insisting Saturday that the continent.
Pope Francis challenged French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders to open their ports to people fleeing hardship and poverty, insisting Saturday that the continent isn’t facing a migration “emergency,” but rather a long-term reality that governments must deal with humanely. For a second straight day in the French port city of Marseille, Francis took aim at European countries that have tried to close their doors to migrants, with the pontiff attempting to shame them into responding with charity instead. He called for migrants to have legal pathways to citizenship, and for the Mediterranean Sea that so many people try to cross to reach Europe to be a beacon of hope, not a graveyard of desperation, per the AP.
The Mediterranean, Francis told Macron and a gathering of regional bishops, “cries out for justice, with its shores that on the one hand exude affluence, consumerism, and waste, while on the other there is poverty and instability.
