ROME — Pope Francis employed some of his strongest language to date Sunday in denouncing Europe’s “scandalous” rejection of migrants.
“The exclusion of migrants is scandalous. Even more, the exclusion of migrants is criminal, it kills them right before our eyes,” the pontiff said in his Sunday homily, departing from his prepared remarks.
“And that’s how the Mediterranean has become the largest cemetery in the world,” he continued. “The exclusion of migrants is disgusting, sinful and criminal, by not opening doors to those in need.”
“‘No, we do not exclude them, we send them away,”’ he dramatized, adding that in reality they are sent “to concentration camps, where they are exploited and sold like slaves.”
“Brothers and sisters, today let us call to mind these migrants, especially those who are dying,” he exhorted. “And those who are able to come in, do we welcome them as brothers and sisters or do we exploit them?”
In his homily, the pope proposed that his hearers resist “the temptation to lock ourselves up in self-absorption and to think only of our own needs.”
“Let us ask ourselves if we are really communities truly open and inclusive of all,” he proposed.
Do we “show ourselves welcoming, not only in words but with concrete gestures, to those both near and far, and all those buffeted by the ups and downs of life. Do we make them feel a part of the community? Or do we exclude them?” he asked.
“Please, always be inclusive: in the Church and in society, which is still marred by many forms of inequality and marginalization. Always be inclusive,” he pleaded.
“The migration currently taking place in Europe is causing great suffering and forcing us to open our hearts – that is the migration of Ukrainians fleeing from war,” Francis proposed. “Let us not forget the battered Ukrainian emigrants.”
The pope pointed to the example of a newly canonized saint, Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, who dreamed of “a world and a Church without barriers, where no one is a foreigner.”
Francis prayed that, following in his footsteps, we might all “walk together, without walls of division.”