Pope Francis arrived at the French port city of Marseille on Friday for a lightning visit that will centre on Europe's migration crisis, lamenting that migrants today face 'a terrible lack of humanity'.
"He behaves like a politician, or the head of an NGO, and not a pope," said Gilles Pennelle, general director of the far-right Rassemblement National party of Marine Le Pen, President Emmanuel Macron's main challenger in last year's presidential vote.
It will have echoes of Francis' first visit as pope - in 2013 to Lampedusa, where he paid tribute to migrants who died at sea and condemned "the globalisation of indifference". "It is a cosmopolitan city that has not completely embraced the French republican idea, where many keep their double-triple identities," Cesare Mattina, a sociologist at the University of Aix-Marseille, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
But Marseille is no immigration utopia. The city has many of the problems that plague most urban centres - crime, drugs, racism and indifference.
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