From Rome
Pope Francis, who began a two-day trip to Malta on Saturday after having postponed it for two years due to the pandemic, speaking on the Mediterranean island with authorities, diplomats and immigrants, once again condemned “the icy wind” of an “unjust and savage” war in Ukraine. And he could not help asking the political world to do everything possible to help migrants.
“I am ready to do everything that can be done” for Ukraine, the pope told reporters on the flight back to Rome. Asked if he had a message for Russian President Putin, Francis said that the messages he has sent are the same for all authorities. “I do not do double language. It is always the same: every war is born from an injustice, always”. And about wars, condemning the proliferation of weapons, he added: “We are all guilty: we are in love with wars.” He also said he was “available” to travel to Ukraine, after President Zelensky invited him in a video conference they had a few days ago.
To politicians and diplomats
The pope met the Maltese authorities on Saturday, in particular President George William Vella and his wife who met him at the airport and where two children in traditional local dress gave him flowers. He then met with Prime Minister Robert Abela and his family and met with the accredited diplomatic corps on the island, at the Grand Master’s Palace in Valletta, the capital of Malta. At the end of the day, after celebrating mass in Floriana, a few kilometers from the capital, he met some 200 immigrants in the town of Hal Far.
“The Mediterranean is in need of European co-responsibility to transform itself once again into a theater of solidarity and not into an outpost of the tragic shipwreck of civilization,” Francis told the authorities and diplomats, thanking the reception that Malta dedicates to migrants. The Mare Nostrum, as the Mediterranean is often called, “cannot become the largest cemetery in Europe,” the Pontiff stressed, referring to the thousands of migrants who have died at sea trying to escape hunger and conflict. in Africa and Asia. According to the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, in recent days at least 90 people who came from Libya, the main center for human traffickers in North Africa, have lost their lives at sea.
The Pope also took the opportunity to appeal to politicians and diplomats: “Let us help each other not to see migrants as a threat and not give in to the temptation to build walls. The other is not a virus to be defended against but a person to receive.
And alluding to Ukraine, Francis stressed that “the icy wind of war, which carries only death, destruction and hatred, has arrogantly fallen on the lives of so many people. And while once again some powerful, sadly closed under the pretext of nationalist interests, provoke and foment conflicts, ordinary people realize the need to build a future that will either be together, or it will not be. Now, in the night of war that has befallen humanity, please do not let the dream of peace disappear.”
The Argentine Pope also stressed that global problems require global solutions. “Let’s help each other to listen to the people’s thirst for peace, let’s work to lay the foundations for an ever broader dialogue, let’s meet again at international conferences for peace where the issue of disarmament is central (…) And that the enormous funds that continue being destined for armaments, be destined for development, health and nutrition”. In this context, Francis also recalled countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, among other regions in conflict, always remembered for the articles in the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano, unlike the rest of the Italian press that focuses only on the war in Ukraine and the ups and downs of the pandemic.
A possible trip to kyiv?
On the plane that took him to Malta, speaking with the journalists who accompanied him about his possible visit to kyiv, Francis said that the issue “is on the table”, that is to say that it was being evaluated. On the plane back he made it clear that he was available for that trip. “But I don’t know if it can be done, if it’s convenient to do it, if I should do it or not”, he also said. Francis also announced that work is being done on a possible meeting between him and Patriarch Cirillo, head of the Moscow Orthodox Church, whom he met for the first time in Cuba in 2016. The Pope was always available for possible mediation in the war. of Ukraine and for this reason, among other things, he held a video conference with Cirillo on March 16. The next personal meeting between the two could be in Lebanon. The problem is that relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are very delicate and that could complicate the situation.
Questioned by journalists also about his severe pain in his knee, which has made him cancel several activities in recent months and forced him to get on the plane with an elevator and not by stairs, Pope Francis said that his pain due to the war in Ukraine “it is so great that some days, the pain in my knee is not even felt”.
The encounter with the migrants
On Sunday Francis visited the grotto of Saint Paul in the town of Rabat (about 17km from Valletta) located in the basilica of the same name, a place that commemorates the shipwreck suffered by the apostle Paul and other people who in the year 60 AD tried to arrive in Rome. Paul and his people swam to Malta and were saved, settling there and spreading Christianity on the island. “Saved from shipwreck, Saint Paul and his traveling companions found here to welcome them good-hearted pagans, who treated them with an unusual cordiality, realizing that they needed refuge, security and assistance,” the Pontiff recalled in the grotto.
After this visit, the Pope went to the town of Floriana, near the capital, where he celebrated Mass in the parish of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in the presence of some 20,000 faithful and representatives of different Christian churches and other denominations. religious, according to the Vatican.
In the afternoon, shortly before returning to Rome, at the John XXIII Peace Laboratory Center in Hal Far, he met some 200 migrants of various origins, many of them rescued at sea. “The shipwreck is an experience that thousands of men, women and children have lived in these years in the Mediterranean -said the Pope-. For many of them it has been tragic. But there is another shipwreck that is taking place while these events are happening: the shipwreck of civilization that threatens not only the fugitives but all of us. How can we save ourselves from this shipwreck? (…) Behaving humanely. Looking at people not as numbers but for what they are (…) and thinking that in the place of these people that I see on television on barges or at sea, one day I could be myself, or my son or my daughter”. .”. And as a connoisseur of the migrant world for being the son of Italian immigrants in Argentina, Pope Bergoglio added: migrants leave their land “with a dream in their hearts. A dream of freedom and democracy. This dream sometimes comes up against a very harsh reality, sometimes dangerous, terrible, inhuman.” And after the testimony of one of the migrants he added: “You have given voice to the unheard call of millions of migrants whose fundamental rights have been violated, sometimes with the complicity of local authorities.” “His stories of him – he concluded by telling the migrants – make us think of the thousands of people who have been forced to flee Ukraine because of this unjust and savage war”.