VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis on Sunday denounced Europe’s indifference towards migrants who risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea by elevating to holiness an Italian bishop and a missionary of Italian origin whose work and life journeys have illustrated the difficulties encountered by Italian emigrants of the nineteenth century.
Frances turned away from prepared remarks to criticize Europe’s treatment of migrants as “disgusting, sinful and criminal”. She noted that people from outside the continent are often left for death on dangerous sea crossings or pushed back to Libya, where they end up in camps he called “lager”, the German word for Nazi concentration camps.
He also recalled the difficult situation of Ukrainians fleeing the war, which, according to him, “causes us great suffering”.
“The exclusion of migrants is scandalous”, Francis said, drawing the applause of the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the canonizations of Don Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, an Italian bishop who in 1887 founded an Order to help Italian emigrants, and Artedime Zatti. , an Italian who emigrated to Argentina in 1897 and there he dedicated his life as a lay worker to help the sick.
“Indeed, the situation of migrants is criminal. We let them die in front of us, making the Mediterranean the largest cemetery in the world. The situation of migrants is disgusting, sinful, criminal. Do not open the doors to those in need. No, we exclude them, we send them back to the concentration camp, where they are exploited and sold as slaves.
He urged the faithful to reflect on the treatment of migrants, asking: “Do we welcome them as brothers or do we exploit them? “
The pontiff said that the two new saints “remind us of the importance of walking together”.
Francis said that Scalabrani showed “great vision”, addressing “a world and a Church without barriers, where no one was a stranger”. And the pontiff defined Zatti as “a living example of gratitude” who dedicated his life to the service of others after being cured of tuberculosis.
Scalabrini founded the Missionaries of San Carlo Borromeo, known as the Scalabrian Fathers, and the Missionary Sisters of San Carlo Borromeo Scalabriane, to take care of the many Italians who left their homeland because of what he wrote were the combined effects of an agricultural and social crisis climate change, poorly managed economy, exorbitant taxation and “the natural desire to improve one’s condition”.
Disturbed by the statistics on Italian emigration which rose to 84,000 in 1884 alone, Scalabrini wrote that mass emigration and the separation of families “would help to sprinkle the lands of America with bones.”
He died in 1905 in Plaisance, where he was bishop, and was beatified in 1997 by St. John Paul. Pope Francis has renounced the obligation to receive a miracle after the beatification.
The order he founded currently manages 176 missions around the world, including 27 reception centers for migrants and 20 schools and childcare centers.
Francesco, himself the son of Italian immigrants in Argentina, recalled drawing inspiration from Zatti’s life when he was provincial superior of the Jesuits in Argentina, saying that the number of entries into the order increased after praying for his intercession.
Zatti was one of eight children born to a peasant couple from northern Italy who emigrated to Argentina in 1897 as a teenager.
After joining the Salesian order at the age of 20, Zatti fell ill with tuberculosis and was sent to a Salesian hospital in northern Patagonia for treatment. He vowed to serve the sick and the poor for the rest of his life if he recovered. Zatti then worked in the same hospital for 40 years, serving as a pharmacy nurse and later as an administrator.
His reputation for healing the sick attracted sick people from all over Patagonia. Zatti was known to cycle around the city of Viedma with a medical case to help the sick. The pontiff also recalled an occasion, Sunday, in which the body of a deceased patient was seen removed during the night, to prevent the sick from seeing the body.
Zatti died in 1951 and was beatified in 2002. Paving the way for canonization, Francis signed the decree recognizing Zatti’s intercession in the healing of a man in the Philippines who had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.
Barry reported from Milan. Francesco Sportelli in Rome and Gianfranco Stara in the Vatican contributed to it.
Follow AP’s coverage on global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
