Pope ‘moved to tears’ over asylum-seekers

TURIN, Italy

Pope Francis said on Sunday the plight of asylum seekers hoping for a new life in Europe was enough to make him cry, condemning those who treat them “like merchandise”.

Speaking during his first pastoral visit to northern Italy, the pontiff slammed hostility towards migrants arriving by boat from Libya, with European countries bickering over who should be forced to provide shelter to the needy.

“It brings tears to one’s eyes to see the spectacle of these days, in which human beings have been treated like merchandise,” he told the crowds.

He was speaking as Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi met his French counterpart Francois Hollande in Milan to discuss the immigration crisis which has seen hundreds of migrants blocked on the border between the two countries.

The head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics was in the industrial city in the northwest of the country for a two-day visit which saw him spend time with the poor, sick and marginalised, including prisoners and migrants.

Francis, whose father grew up in the city, was in Turin to pray before the mysterious shroud, believed by Christians to be the burial cloth of Jesus but held by sceptics to be a medieval fake.

Sitting before it in silence in the city’s cathedral, Francis remained with his head bowed in prayer before rising to contemplate up close the linen cloth which bears the faint image of a man who appears to have died by crucifixion.

Radiocarbon dating in 1989 declared the 14 by four foot cloth, which has traces of blood and DNA on it, to be around 700 years old. But if it is a fake, international experts have failed to discover how it was made.

The Church sidesteps the issue by calling the venerated cloth a religious icon.

The shroud “encourages us to consider the faces of everyone who suffers and is unjustly persecuted,” the pontiff said during his Angelus prayer.

CLOSING THEIR DOORS

In Italy, criminal networks have been preying on refugees, exploiting them to pocket government subsidies, while the northern regions in particular have begun closing their doors to asylum seekers.

Francis warned people not to blame those fleeing war and famine for economic difficulties, insisting that “if immigration increases competition (for jobs), they cannot be blamed because they are victims of injustice… and wars”.

Meanwhile, thousands of people took to the streets in several European cities on Saturday, in a show of solidarity with migrants seeking refuge in Europe and against austerity measures in debt-ridden Greece.

In Berlin, some 3,700 turned out according to local police, while organisers said 10,000 participated in a protest held on World Refugee Day, that had been called by German opposition parties Die Linke (The Left) and Gruenen (The Greens).

In the German capital, protesters chanted:

“No frontiers, no nations, stop deportation!” and “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here!”

Marching from the bohemian Kreuzberg district to Brandenburg gate, some of the protesters held up Greek flags and posters bearings slogans supporting Athens, as a critical June 30 deadline in debt talks looms.