Pope Francis on Sunday denounced Europe's indifference toward migrants risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea as he elevated to sainthood an Italian bishop and Italian-born missionary whose work and life paths illustrated the difficulties faced by 19th Century Italian emigrants.
Francis departed from prepared remarks to slam Europe's treatment of migrants as “disgusting, sinful and criminal”. He noted that people from outside the continent are often left to die during perilous sea crossings or pushed back to Libya, where they wind up in camps he referred to as “lager”, the German word referring to Nazi concentration camps.
He also recalled the plight of Ukrainians fleeing war, which he said “causes us great suffering”.
“The exclusion of migrants is scandalous," Francis said, generating applause from the faithful gathered in St Peter's Square for the canonisations of Don Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, an Italian bishop who founded an order to help Italian emigrants in 1887, and Artedime Zatti, an Italian who emigrated in 1897 to Argentina and dedicated his life as a lay-worker there to helping the sick.