"By despising man created in his image, leaving him at the mercy of the waves, in the lapping of indifference, sometimes justified even in the name of alleged Christian values, God is offended".
Pope Francis said this at the Reception and Identification Center of the Greek island of Lesbos, the area equipped for the reception of refugees that replaced the refugee camp of "Moria", the largest in Europe until September 2020 when was entirely destroyed by fire. The Pope had been right here 5 years ago.
"I am here again to meet you - he said addressing the migrants -. I am here to tell you that I am close to you, but to say it from the heart. I am here to see your faces, to look you in the eyes. Eyes full of fear and expectation, eyes who have seen violence and poverty, eyes furrowed with too many tears ".
"Closures and nationalisms - history teaches us - lead to disastrous consequences", he continued: "It is an illusion to think that it is enough to safeguard oneself, defending oneself from the weakest who knock on the door. The future will put us even more in contact with each other. with others. To turn it to the good you don't need unilateral actions, but wide-ranging policies ". History "teaches us this but we have not yet learned it. Do not turn your back on reality, stop the continuous rebound of responsibility, do not always delegate the migration issue to others, as if no one cared and it was just a useless burden".
"It is sad - he added - to hear proposed, as solutions, the use of common funds to build walls, barbed wires". Of course, "we understand fears and insecurities, difficulties and dangers. We feel tiredness and frustration, exacerbated by the economic and pandemic crises, but it is not by raising barriers that problems are solved and coexistence is improved". It is done "by joining forces to take care of others according to the real possibilities of each and respecting the law, always putting the irrepressible value of the life of every man in the first place".
"It is easy to drag public opinion by instilling fear of the other", the attack. Why, on the other hand, he asks, "with the same attitude, do we not speak of the exploitation of the poor, of forgotten and often lavishly financed wars, of economic agreements made on the skin of the people, of hidden maneuvers to smuggle arms and make their trade proliferate?" .
"Let us not hurry away from the crude images of the little bodies of children lying inert on the beaches. The Mediterranean, which for millennia has united different peoples and distant lands, is becoming a cold cemetery without tombstones - is the alarm raised -. This large basin. water, the cradle of many civilizations, now looks like a mirror of death. Let us not allow the 'mare nostrum' to turn into a desolating 'mare mortuum', let this meeting place become the scene of conflict! of memories' turn into the 'sea of forgetfulness'. Please, let us stop this shipwreck of civilization! ".
(Unioneonline / D)