ROME — Pope Francis said Thursday migrants should be valued for their dreams and talents rather than treated as a “problem to me managed.”
“I find it greatly disheartening to see that migration is still shrouded in a dark cloud of mistrust, rather than being seen as a source of empowerment,” the pontiff declared in his yearly address to members of the diplomatic corps.
“People on the move are seen simply as a problem to be managed,” he lamented, urging that they not be “treated like objects to be moved about.”
Migrants “have dignity and resources that they can offer to others; they have their own experiences, needs, fears, aspirations, dreams, skills and talents,” he said.
What is needed is an international effort to confront the phenomenon of migration by creating “safe regular pathways,” the pope proposed.
The migrants themselves “are forced to walk thousands of kilometers in Central America or in the Sahara desert, or to cross the Mediterranean Sea or the English Channel in overcrowded makeshift boats, only to be turned away or forced to live clandestinely in a foreign country,” he said regretfully.
“We can easily forget that we are dealing with real persons who ought to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated,” he added.
On the same topic, Francis said that the root causes of migration must be confronted, “so that leaving one’s home to look for another is a choice and not a necessary means of survival.”
In this regard, a common commitment to development can be “a means of helping eliminate some of the causes leading people to migrate,” he suggested.
In his speech, the pope also addressed another favorite topic of his, namely care for the environment and the “crisis” of climate change.
All of us are debtors not only to God and to others, he said, but “also to our beloved earth, from which we draw our daily sustenance.”
As a result, “each of us must feel in some way responsible for the devastation to which the Earth, our common home, has been subjected,” he exhorted.
Increasingly, “nature itself seems to be rebelling against human action by extreme manifestations of its power,” he submitted, citing as examples of this “the devastating floods in Central Europe and Spain, the cyclones that hit Madagascar in the spring and, just before Christmas, the French Department of Mayotte and Mozambique.”
We do not have the right to “remain indifferent in the face of all this,” he declared.
The pope went on to praise commitments made at the COP 29 climate change summit in Baku “to secure greater financial resources for climate action.”
“I trust that these will allow for the sharing of resources for the many countries greatly affected by the climate crisis and burdened by oppressive economic debt,” he said, adding that humanity is increasingly aware of the “ecological debt” that exists particularly between the global North and South.