Pope urges solidarity towards migrants and refugees

Pope Francis on Wednesday (October 26) urged nations not to close their doors to migrants and refugees.

Conducting his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, the pope also called on people to carry out acts of solidarity towards migrants.

“In some parts of the world walls and barriers are coming up. It seems sometimes that the silent work of the many men and women who, in diverse ways, are doing their utmost to help and assist refugees and migrants is obscured by the noise of others who are giving a voice to an instinctive egoism. But closing up is not the solution, in fact, it ends up helping criminal trafficking. The only solution is that of solidarity. Solidarity,” Francis said, prompting an applause from the large crowds gathered in the square.

Diverting from his pre-written notes, Francis went on to tell the story of a woman who had recently encountered a refugee asking for directions to the Vatican. Noticing that the man was not wearing shoes, the woman offered to accompany him to St. Peter’s Square in a taxi. The driver of the taxi initially did not want to take on the refugee because he smelled but eventually relented, the pope said. As they journeyed across Rome, the refugee told his story and the driver was so moved by his suffering that upon their arrival he refused to take payment for the trip, Francis said.

“This woman recognised the pain of a migrant because she has Armenian blood and she knows of the suffering of her people. When we do something like that at first we refuse it because it is inconvenient to us, it smells, but in the end it perfumes our souls, it changes us. Think about this story and think about what we can do for refugees,” Francis said.

The pope has made defence of migrants a major plank of his papacy.

The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, has often urged Catholic parishes in Europe to host them, with limited success.

In April, after visiting a migrant camp in Greece, the pope brought three families of Syrian refugees back to Rome with him.