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Pope Francis met with President Emmanuel Macron of France on Saturday on the second day of a whirlwind journey to Marseille, a port metropolis within the nation’s south the place the pontiff reiterated his forceful condemnation of the world’s indifference towards the deaths of migrants making an attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
Hundreds of law enforcement officials blanketed town on Saturday and blocked visitors across the Palais du Pharo, a Nineteenth-century palace overlooking town’s outdated port the place Mr. Macron and his spouse, Brigitte, greeted Francis on a windy morning.
They shook arms and smiled, and the 86-year-old pontiff, who usually makes use of a wheelchair, briefly walked as an alternative, holding onto Mr. Macron’s arm.
The pope’s journey is just not an official state go to. Mr. Macron and Francis attended the closing session of the Mediterranean Conferences, a weeklong gathering of bishops and different representatives. They then met one on one for half an hour, forward of a large Mass later within the afternoon at Marseille’s soccer stadium.
The Rev. Vito Impellizzeri, a professor on the Pontifical Theological College of Sicily, who attended the gathering, mentioned the pope was coming to assist shift perceptions of the Mediterranean.
“It mustn’t merely be the tomb and conflict of civilizations,” he mentioned, but in addition “an area of reciprocity and encounters.”
The pope has centered a lot of his journey up to now on the plight of migrants trying the damaging Mediterranean crossing from North and sub-Saharan Africa to Europe.
In a speech on Saturday, he mentioned the Mediterranean was reworking from “the cradle of civilization” right into a “graveyard of dignity.” Folks “have the correct each to to migrate and to not to migrate,” he mentioned, however all ought to be afforded compassion.
“Those that threat their lives at sea don’t invade, they search for welcome,” the pope mentioned, calling migration “a actuality of our instances” that European governments wanted to deal with with higher cooperation, extra authorized routes to entry, and higher integration.
“Right here additionally the Mediterranean mirrors the world, with the South turning to the North,” he mentioned, including that many creating nations suffering from instability, battle and desertification have been “trying to people who are well-off, in a globalized world wherein we’re all linked, however one wherein the disparities have by no means been so broad.”
Mr. Macron is a disrupter of French politics who has lengthy been fascinated by Francis’ willingness to shake issues up within the church, however he doesn’t see eye to eye with the pope on numerous points.
His authorities has hardened its stance on the problem of migrants because it seeks help from the correct on an upcoming immigration invoice, and it’s anticipated to unveil laws on assisted dying this fall — a coverage that the Roman Catholic Church rejects. In his speech, Francis criticized “the false pretenses of a supposedly dignified and ‘candy’ demise.’”
Tens of hundreds are anticipated to line the streets later within the day as Francis is pushed to the Vélodrome, the soccer stadium in Marseille, the place devotion to the native workforce is a religion of its personal.
Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, the archbishop of Marseille, who helped orchestrate the pope’s journey, mentioned in an interview with the day by day Le Parisien this week that Francis had instructed him, “If I am going to Paris, I’ll see protocol; in Marseille, I’ll see the individuals.”
“That’s why we selected the Vélodrome,” Cardinal Aveline mentioned. “On the stadium, it’s like going into the house of every Marseillais.”
He added, “Marseille attracts him as a result of it’s a periphery, between Europe and the Mediterranean, Orient and Occident, and specifically as a result of it’s a place of fracture.”
Francis has lengthy most well-liked touring to the world’s fringes fairly than its energy facilities. In Marseille, he met privately early Saturday with individuals “in a scenario of financial hardship” at a charity home, based on the Vatican.
Marseille, a gritty, sprawling metropolis of about 870,000, is suffering from pockets of utmost poverty, strained social companies and lethal drug-related violence. However it’s also considered one of France’s oldest and most cosmopolitan cities, a predominantly working-class patchwork of ethnic and non secular communities that has been formed by waves of immigration from Europe and Africa.
“It’s a metropolis that fits the pope,” mentioned Isabelle de Gaulmyn, a high editor at La Croix, France’s main Catholic newspaper.
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.
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