Pope Francis: Turning Away Migrants Is a ‘Grave Sin’

Pope Francis poses for a selfie with a man as he visits a migrant reception centre during
ALESSANDRO BIANCHI/AFP via Getty
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

ROME — Immigration laws should not be made stricter but rather looser, to allow more immigrants to cross international borders, Pope Francis said Wednesday.

“Rather than more restrictive laws and the militarization of borders, what is needed is an expansion of secure and regular means of access,” the pontiff told those present for his weekly General Audience, “and a global governance of migrations based on justice, fraternity and solidarity.”

“It must be said clearly: there are those who work systematically and by any means to turn away migrants – to turn away migrants,” the pope stated. “And this, when done with conscience and responsibility, is a grave sin.”

God “shares the drama of migrants, God is with them, with migrants, he suffers with them, with migrants, he weeps and hopes with them, with migrants,” he insisted, adding that the Lord is with our migrants, “not with those who turn them away.”

In his audience, Francis also praised the work of NGOs and others who like Good Samaritans “do their utmost to help and save the wounded and abandoned migrants on the routes of desperate hope.”

“These courageous men and women are a sign of a humanity that does not allow itself to be infected by the bad culture of indifference and waste,” he said; “what kills migrants is our indifference and that attitude of discarding.”

“And I ask you: do you pray for migrants, for these who come to our lands to save their lives? And ‘you’ want to chase them away,” he scolded.

The push for more streamlined international migration has been a hallmark of the Francis papacy, while he has demonized as “xenophobic” those who call for stronger, less porous borders.

Yet while the pope and many European bishops have encouraged greater openness to migrants and easier migration paths, African prelates have sharply criticized this approach, insisting that mass migration is detrimental to their people and should not be encouraged.

Nigerian Cardinal John Onaiyekan, the archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, has said that the mass migration out of his country is a sure sign that political leadership has failed.

“Authorities should make Nigeria home. Same should be applicable to other African countries,” he said.

Having visited Italy and seen the number of Nigerian prostitutes on the streets of Rome and other cities as a result of mass migration, the cardinal said he was ashamed.

“To tell you bluntly I’m ashamed, I’m ashamed,” he told the BBC. “I’m moving through the streets of Rome, Milan, Naples and I see my daughters on the street on sale.”

“I’m ashamed and I stop and even greet some of them — you can’t even engage them in conversation because they were brought out of the village illiterates. All they learn and all they know on the streets of Italy is what they need for this business — I’m ashamed.”

According to reports, some 80 percent of Nigerian women who have arrived on Italian shores wind up in prostitution, usually by force, and currently one of every two prostitutes in Italy is Nigerian.

Many young Nigerian women are enticed into traveling to Italy with promises of honest work only to find that they are expected to sell themselves on the streets.

Similarly, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, the former head of the Vatican’s liturgical department, has contended that the Church should not be encouraging migration.

It is wrong to “use the word of God to promote migration,” he said, because using the Bible to encourage migration is a “false interpretation.” It is better “to help people flourish in their culture than to encourage them to come to Europe,” he said.

The cardinal also denounced the Church’s push for migration into Europe, insisting that most immigrants wind up in Europe “without work or dignity” and assume the condition of slaves.

“Is that what the Church wants?” he asked, adding that the Church should not support “this new form of slavery that is mass migration.”

Cardinal Sarah has also argued that a Church of migration and ecology is “of interest to no one” and that it risks becoming just another NGO if it focuses on these “horizontal” issues rather than preaching Jesus Christ.

“The crisis of the Church is above all a crisis of the faith,” he said. “Some want the Church to be a human and horizontal society; they want it to speak the language of the media. They want to make it popular.”

Another high-ranking African prelate, Cardinal Peter Turkson, has said it is high time to “close the tap” of African immigration into Europe.

Amidst rumors in 2017 that Italian authorities were preparing to close down ports and begin turning away ships filled with migrants, Turkson spoke approvingly of the move, telling reporters that the time has come to “turn off the faucet” of African migration to Europe.

“It is like water flowing from an open tap,” he said. “It’s not enough just to dry it, you have to turn off the faucet,” he added, noting that the vast majority of African countries are not war zones from which the populations must necessarily flee.

Yet another African Cardinal, the Nigerian Francis Arinze, once considered a top candidate for the papacy, has urged Europeans to stop encouraging Africans to migrate to Europe, insisting that people are better off in their home countries.

In a 2019 interview, the cardinal said that when countries lose their young people to migration, they lose the people who can best build their nation’s future.

The countries in Europe and America can help best “not by encouraging the young people to come to Europe as if they looked on Europe as heaven – a place where money grows on trees – but to help the countries from which they come,” he said.

At the height of Europe’s migrant crisis, Professor Anna Bono, who teaches African History and Institutions at the University of Turin, called out the “fake news” that most of the migrants coming from Africa to Italy are refugees escaping from war, hunger, or bad weather.

Out of every 100 migrants arriving in Italy, only 4 are refugees, she declared, and the other 96 are essentially economic migrants looking for a better life.

The migrants tend to be young, middle-class males, Bono said, adding that the enormous costs of emigration contradict the common thesis that migrants are fleeing dire situations of indigence. Those who want to come to Europe must procure as much as $10,000 to pay traffickers for their passage.

The professor also noted that there is extensive propaganda by traffickers in African countries promoting emigration to Europe.

“In the countries of sub-Saharan Africa there are advertisements inciting people to go to Italy, explaining that everything here is free. And indeed it is,” she said. “I imagine the phone calls these guys make home to their friends, confirming that everything is actually given them for free.”

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