Pope Francis: migrants are people not a social problem

Christians are called to follow the spirit of the beatitudes by comforting the poor and oppressed, especially migrants and refugees who are rejected, exploited and left to die, said Pope Francis.

The least "who have been thrown away, marginalized, oppressed, discriminated against, mistreated, exploited, abandoned, poor and suffering" cry out to God ", asking to be freed from the evils that afflict them," the pope said in his homily on 8 July during a mass in memory of the sixth anniversary of his visit to the southern Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.

“They are people; these are not mere social or migratory issues. It is not just about migrants, in the double sense that migrants are, first of all, human persons and that they are the symbol of all those rejected by today's globalized society, ”he said.

According to the Vatican, about 250 migrants, refugees and relief volunteers attended the Mass, which was celebrated on the altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica. Francis greeted all those present at the end of the Mass.

In his homily, the pope reflected on the first reading of the book of Genesis in which Jacob dreamed of a ladder leading to heaven "and the messengers of God went up and down on it".

Unlike the Tower of Babel, which was humanity's attempt to reach heaven and become divinity, the ladder in Jacob's dream was the means by which the Lord descends to humanity and “reveals himself; it is God who saves ”, the pope explained.

“The Lord is a refuge for the faithful, who invite him in times of tribulation,” he said. “Because it is precisely in those moments that our prayer is made purer, when we realize that the security that the world offers has little value and only God remains. Only God opens heaven for those who live on earth. Only God saves. "

The Gospel reading of St. Matthew, who recalled Jesus who was healing a sick woman and raising a girl from the dead, also reveals "the need for a preferential option for the minimum, those who must receive the front row in the exercise of charity . "

The same care, he added, must extend to vulnerable people who flee from suffering and violence only to encounter indifference and death.

“The latter are abandoned and deceived into dying in the desert; the latter are tortured, abused and violated in the detention camps; the latter face the waves of an implacable sea; the latter are left in the refugee camps too long for them to be called temporary, ”the pope said.

Francis stated that the image of Jacob's ladder represents the connection between heaven and earth which is "guaranteed and accessible to all". However, to climb those steps requires "commitment, commitment and grace".

"I like to think that we could be those angels, ascendants and descendants, taking under our wings the little ones, the lame, the sick, the excluded," the pope said. "The least, who otherwise would remain behind and would experience only by grinding poverty on earth, without glimpsing anything of the brightness of the sky in this life."

The pope's plea for compassion towards migrants and refugees less than a week after a migrant detention camp in Tripoli, Libya, was bombed in an air raid. The Libyan government blamed the July 3 attack on the Libyan national army, led by renegade military general Khalifa Haftar.

According to the pan-Arab news network Al-Jazeera, the air raid killed about 60 people, mostly migrants and refugees from African countries, including Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.

Francis denounced the attack and led pilgrims in prayer for the victims on July 7 during his Angelus speech.

"The international community can no longer tolerate such serious events," he said. “I pray for the victims; may the God of peace receive the dead and support the wounded ”.