“People who find themselves liable to drowning when deserted on the waves have to be rescued,” Pope Francis mentioned Friday in Marseille, France, at a memorial devoted to sailors and migrants. Francis described efforts to cease the migrants from being rescued as “gestures of hate.”
Migrants from Africa and the Center East typically board rickety watercraft to Europe in hopes of a greater life there or elsewhere.
The primary cease for a lot of of them is usually the Italian island of Lampedusa. Lately, the island has been overwhelmed with hundreds of migrants.
Typically the migrant boats are deserted at sea by their smugglers.
Rescue teams are typically prohibited by some European international locations from rescuing the migrants or are delayed of their rescue missions.
“And so this stunning sea has turn out to be an enormous cemetery, the place many brothers and sisters are disadvantaged even of the precise to a grave,” Francis mentioned Friday of the Mediterranean Sea, the place tens of hundreds of migrants have died.
The chief of the Roman Catholic Church thanked the humanitarian teams that rescue migrants.
On Saturday, Francis will preside over the closing session in Marseille of a gathering of bishops and younger individuals from across the Mediterranean area.
Some info for this report got here from The Related Press.