Pope urges tolerance for migrants

VATICAN CITY, Tuesday
Pope Francis on Tuesday said “mere tolerance” toward migrants and asylum seekers is not enough and he called for a “globalisation of charity” towards those fleeing warzones and poverty.

“It is necessary to respond to the globalisation of migration with the globalisation of charity and cooperation, in such a way as to make the conditions of migrants more humane,” the pontiff said in a message to mark the World Day of Migrants and Refugees next January.

“Large numbers of people are leaving their homelands, with a suitcase full of fears and desires, to undertake a hopeful and dangerous trip in search of more humane living conditions,” he said in the text of an address he will give January 18.

“Often, however, such migration gives rise to suspicion and hostility, even in ecclesiastical communities, prior to any knowledge of the migrants’ lives or their stories of persecution and destitution,” he said.

The Argentine-born pontiff, who has vowed to make protecting the poor and marginalised a cornerstone of his papacy, said “achieving mere tolerance that respects diversity and ways of sharing between different backgrounds and cultures is not sufficient.”

He called for the creation of “a universal network of cooperation” to fight trafficking and enslavement, and reminded the international community that “no country can singlehandedly face the difficulties associated with this phenomenon”, as Italy struggles to deal with thousands of new boat migrant arrivals and deadly shipwrecks.

FEARED DROWNED

Earlier this month, 500 migrants and asylum seekers were feared drowned after their boat sank off Malta, leaving just 10 survivors, who said the traffickers in charge of organising the dangerous crossing from North Africa had intentionally sunk their boat.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis joked during a visit to Albania that Mother Teresa would have struck fear into him if she had been his mother superior, the Vatican spokesman said Monday.

“She spoke her mind,” Francis told the Albanian priest acting as his interpreter during the visit on Sunday, according to papal spokesman Federico Lombardi. The pope met the late nun, an ethnic Albanian from Macedonia, in Rome in 1994 when he was mere Bishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Lombardi said the pope recalled admiring “the strength and the decisive character of her involvement”.

“I would have been scared if she had been my mother superior,” he told the priest.

Forever associated with her work in the slums of Kolkata, Mother Teresa has given her name to airports, hospitals, schools and roads in Albania.
She died in 1997, and was beatified in 2003. (AFP)