Pope Francis is visiting the French port city of Marseille.
It's an increasingly lonely voice in Europe, where some countries are turning more and more to border fences, repatriations andFrancis is presiding over the closing session of a gathering of Mediterranean Catholic bishops, but his two-day visit that begins Friday is aimed at sending a message well beyond the Catholic faithful to Europe, North Africa and beyond.
France, for its part, beefed up border patrols at its southern frontier with Italy, a few hours' drive from Marseille, and increased drone surveillance of the Alps to keep the newcomers from crossing over. With a European Parliament election looming next year and the far-right challenging the centrist government's line, French government officials stood firm.
“The church must measure these evils well and find a path that is neither naively irenic nor aggressive out of special interests, but prophetic,” by being close to migrants and living among them, he told reporters in Rome before the visit. The visit comes on the eve of the Catholic Church’s annual celebration of migrants and refugees, with this year’s theme noting the internationally recognized right to migrate but also the right to not migrate, and to live at home safely and securely.
Marco Impagliazzo, head of the Sant’Egidio Community that is helping organize the corridors, said the numbers of migrants arriving by boat in Italy this year are high but by no means constitutes an emergency. Migration, he said, isn't an emergency but rather “a long-term problem, a structural phenomenon that requires medium and long-term solutions” that could also be of enormous benefit to Italy, given its demographic crisis.
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