ROME — Pope Francis said Wednesday that immigration laws should be relaxed, not tightened, to allow more migrants to cross the border.
“We need greater safe and regular access rather than more restrictive laws and the militarization of borders,” the pope said. said The Pope appealed to those attending his weekly general audience for a “global governance of migration based on justice, fraternity and solidarity.”
“We must be clear: there are people working in an organized manner, using all means, to drive away migrants,” the Pope said. stated“And if you do this with conscience and responsibility, it's a grave sin.”
“God shares in the tragedies of migrants, he is with them, he suffers with them, he weeps with them, he hopes with them,” he asserted, adding that God is with migrants, “and not with those who turn them away.”
So when will Pope Francis tear down the evil Vatican walls and let millions of immigrants in? And when will the Vatican let in unvaccinated immigrants? https://t.co/eawkFWCPdG
—Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) September 27, 2021
Speaking to the audience, Pope Francis also praised the work of NGOs and other organisations who, like the Good Samaritans, “devote all their efforts to helping and rescuing migrants, hurt and abandoned, who find themselves on the path of hopelessness”.
“These brave men and women are symbols of humanity untainted by a culture of indifference and waste,” he said. “It is our indifference and abandonment that is killing migrants.”
“And I ask you: are you praying for immigrants, for immigrants who come to our country to save their lives? And you want to drive them away?” he rebuked.
While promoting more streamlined international migration has been a hallmark of Pope Francis, he has also demonized as “xenophobes” those who want stronger and more transparent borders.
But while the Pope and many European bishops have encouraged greater openness and ease of immigration, African prelates have strongly criticized this approach, arguing that mass migration is harmful to their own people and should not be encouraged.
Nigerian Cardinal John Onaiyekan, archbishop of Abuja, said mass emigration from his country was a sure sign of a failure of political leadership.
“The authorities should make Nigeria their home. The same should be true for other African countries,” he said. said.
The cardinal, who visited Italy and saw the large number of Nigerian prostitutes on the streets of Rome and other cities as a result of mass immigration, Embarrassing.
“Frankly, it's embarrassing, it's embarrassing,” he said. said The BBC reported: “Walk through the streets of Rome, Milan or Naples and you see girls being sold on the streets.”
“Some people stop to say hello because they are embarrassed. They were brought here from the village illiterate and cannot even converse. Everything they learned and know on the streets of Italy is what they need for this business. It's embarrassing.”
Reports suggest that around 80 percent of Nigerian women who land in Italy end up in prostitution, often forced into it, and that one in two prostitutes in Italy today is Nigerian.
Pope Francis praises multiculturalism: 'Immigration always brings wealth' https://t.co/URSYoR7CiP
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 7, 2019
Many young Nigerian women are lured to Italy with the promise of honest work, but end up finding themselves required to sell themselves on the streets.
Similarly, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, former head of the Vatican's liturgical department, has argued that the Church should not encourage migration.
He said it was wrong to “use the Word of God to promote migration” because using the Bible to encourage migration was a “misinterpretation.” “It's better to help people thrive in their own cultures than to urge them to come to Europe,” he said.
The cardinal also condemned the church's push for immigration to Europe, saying most migrants arrive there “without work or dignity” and end up in slave-like conditions.
“Is that what the church wants?” he asked, adding that the church should not support “the new form of slavery that is mass immigration.”
Cardinal Sarah also argued that the Church's issues of migration and ecology are “not of interest to anyone” and that by focusing on these “horizontal” issues, rather than preaching Jesus Christ, the Church risks becoming just another NGO.
“The crisis of the Church is above all a crisis of faith,” he says. said“Some want the Church to become a human, horizontal society. They want the Church to speak the language of the media. They want to popularize the Church.”
Another African prelate, Cardinal Peter Turkusson, said it was time to “turn off the tap” on African migration to Europe.
In 2017, amid rumors that Italian authorities were preparing to close the port and refuse entry to boats carrying migrants, Turkuson welcomed the move. tell It's time to “turn off the tap” on migration from Africa to Europe, the journalists argue.
“It's like having a tap open and the water running,” he said. “It's not enough to just let it dry. You have to turn the tap off,” he added, referring to the vast majority Many African countries are not war zones from which residents must flee.
Another African, Nigerian-born Cardinal Francis Arinze, once seen as a leading candidate for the pope, urged European countries to stop encouraging Africans to emigrate to Europe, arguing that people are happier in their home countries.
In a 2019 interview, the cardinal said that when a country loses its young people to immigration, it also loses the people who can best build its future.
How many refugees live within those walls? https://t.co/3oaqgApZHF
—Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 22, 2017
European and American countries can best help, he said, “by supporting the countries they come from, rather than encouraging young people to come to Europe because they see it as a paradise, a place where money grows on trees.”
At the height of the European migration crisis, Anna Bono, a professor of African history and institutions at the University of Turin, said most of the migrants coming to Italy from Africa were refugees Fleeing war, famine and bad weather.
She argued that for every 100 migrants arriving in Italy, only four are refugees, while the remaining 96 are essentially economic migrants seeking a better life.
Migrants tend to be young, middle-class men, Bono said, adding that the sheer cost of migration contradicts the common narrative that migrants are fleeing dire poverty: People wanting to come to Europe must prepare as much as $10,000 for traffickers to cover travel costs.
He also pointed out that human traffickers are spreading propaganda in African countries encouraging people to migrate to Europe.
“There are ads in sub-Saharan Africa inviting people to go to Italy, explaining that everything is free here, and it is,” she said. “I imagine these people calling their friends back home to confirm that everything is really given for free.”
