The deep blue sea, bathed in sunlight, is silhouetted behind the silhouette of the Camargue cross. The monument installed in the shadow of the Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica, on the heights of Marseille, in honor of sailors and migrants who died at sea, seems to watch over the immense expanse, failing to have been able to save them. Surrounded by Marseille officials of all religions and personalities involved in helping refugees, François chose this memorial to give the most memorable speech of his first day in Marseille, Friday September 22. With in mind one of the subjects that is most close to his heart since the start of his pontificate: the migration question. “ Faced with such a tragedyhe warned on Friday, words are useless. » It’s necessary ” acts “, he insisted, estimating that Europe and humanity are at risk “a crossroads of civilizations” facing a tragedy “which is bloodying the Mediterranean”.
Coming to the Phocaean city, a city of mixed race with a history marked by different waves of immigration, the Pope had planned to focus on the question of refugees. A subject which marked ten years of a pontificate turned towards the margins and the fractures: from Lampedusa, in Italy, to Lesbos, in Greece, via the plane which brought him back from Portugal in August and today in the Phocaean city, the head of the Catholic Church never fails to thunder against what he calls “the war of this time”. An expression to reflect the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe that has been playing out in the Mediterranean for a decade.
On the plane that took him to Marseille, the sovereign pontiff warned: “I hope I have the courage to say everything I want to say. » As a warning of the power of the speech he would deliver a few hours later. Undoubtedly the loudest since the cry he uttered during his visit to a migrant camp on the island of Lesbos in 2021.
“Shattered lives and shattered dreams”
In front of this blue sea, scene of constantly renewed tragedies over the last ten years, he of course paid a vibrant tribute to those who regularly die while trying to go to Europe with the hope of a better life. . But above all he called on the Old Continent for a collective start obeying a “duty of humanity”.
Friday, words are strong. “We are gathered in memory of those who did not survive, who were not saved”immediately clarified a visibly moved François, before launching: “Let us not get used to considering shipwrecks as news items and deaths at sea as numbers. » ” No ! “, he thundered, these are “names and first names”, “faces and stories”, “broken lives and shattered dreams”.
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