The pope used a visit to Morocco — a pathway for migrants trying to reach Europe — to again denounce hardening policies in the West.
Pope Francis and King Mohammed VI walk on the Hassan Tower esplanade in Rabat, Morocco.
Francis also used the visit to highlight Morocco as a moderate example of Islam, and made a case for Christian-Muslim cooperation just two weeks after hate-fueled mosque shootings in New Zealand that claimed 50 lives. Migration numbers to Europe are down drastically from the peak in 2015. But individual countries still feel pressure. Morocco has faced criticism from humanitarian groups for allegedly rounding up undocumented migrants and transferring them to remote parts of the country.
But his remarks Saturday took a broader aim, as Francis described his philosophies on migrants: how they can be exploited; how they should be encouraged to learn the local language; how migrants can integrate only with the absence of “fear and ignorance.”The 27-hour trip is Francis’s latest outreach to the Muslim world, following visits to Egypt in 2017 and the United Arab Emirates last month.
In a joint declaration, Francis and King Mohammed VI made an appeal for another area that has been a hotbed of tensions, calling on Jerusalem to be preserved as a “symbol of peaceful coexistence.”
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