Scottish Catholic Observer

The world has ‘forgotten how to cry’ over the plight of the world’s refugees, Pope Francis said on Monday as he greeted thousands of migrants on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa.

Before saying a word publicly on the island, the Holy Father made the Sign of the Cross and tossed a wreath of white and yellow flowers into the Mediterranean Sea in memory of the estimated 20,000 African immigrants who have died in the past 25 years trying to reach a new life in Europe (above).

The Pope also greeted newly arrived migrants at Lampedusa, and during Mass on the island’s sports field, thanked the residents for welcoming so many men and women over the years.

The Holy Father told the congregation at an outdoor Mass that he decided to visit the tiny Sicilian island of Lampedusa, which has a population of 6000 and is just 70 miles from Tunisia, after seeing newspaper headlines in June describing the drowning of immigrants at sea.

“Those boats, instead of being a means of hope, were a means of death,” the Pope said in his homily. “Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters of ours? All of us respond: ‘It wasn’t me. I have nothing to do with it. It was others, certainly not me.’

“Today, no one feels responsible for this. We have lost a sense of fraternal responsibility.”

The Holy Father added that the world is acting like those in the Gospel who saw the man who had been beaten, robbed and left on the road half dead, but kept walking.

Lampedusa, a treeless strip of rock less than six miles long, is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland and is the main port of entry into Europe for African migrants smuggled by boat from Libya or Tunisia.

The Mass site was located near the ‘boat cemetery’ that houses the remains of broken migrant ships that have reached Lampedusa’s rocky shores.

Dozens of Lampedusan fishing boats accompanied the coast guard ship carrying the Pope as it pulled into port. There was also a seaborne motorcade to honour the first Pope to visit an island that often complains it has been forgotten by Europe, as it processes the thousands of would-be immigrants who come ashore each year.

As his plane was landing in Sicily before his boat trip to Lampedusa, a boat carrying 162 Eritreans arrived in port, the latest in a new wave of migrants taking advantage of calm seas and warm weather to make the treacherous crossing. Officials said they were in good condition, but suffering from the cold.

Pope Francis, whose ancestors emigrated to Argentina from Italy, has a special place in his heart for refugees. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he denounced the exploitation of migrants as ‘slavery’ and said those who did nothing to help them were complicit by their silence.

According to the UN refugee agency, 8400 migrants landed in Italy and Malta in the first six months of this year, almost double the 4500 who arrived during the first half of 2012. It is still a far cry from the tens of thousands who flooded to Italy during the Arab Spring exodus of 2011.

—This story was published in full in the July 12 print edition of the SCO, available in parishes.