Pope Francis went to Marseille on September 22 and 23, 2023, at the initiative of Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille, to close the Mediterranean Meetings to which 70 bishops and 70 young people from the five shores of the Mediterranean were invited. Mediterranean to give new impetus to the meeting between peoples in order to move towards peace. An expected impulse as the fault lines multiply, between wars, religious conflicts, migratory tragedies, identity and political withdrawals, economic inequalities, climate change.
The highlight of the sovereign pontiff’s visit to the Mediterranean city marked by more than 3,000 years of history and crossbreeding, was his pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de la Garde, the basilica which dominates the Phocaean city, where he paid tribute to sailors and migrants missing at sea, a subject that is particularly close to his heart. “ The Mediterranean is a cemetery for migrants, but North Africa is the biggest cemetery for them “, he declared in August 2023.
Pope Francis presided over a giant mass, Saturday September 23, 2023, at the legendary Vélodrome stadium in the presence of 60,000 people.
In this program, several people, from Marseillais, bishops from several Mediterranean countries, speak on the issues of this visit of Pope Francis to Marseille, on his desire to unite the Church on subjects which divide, in particular, on the migration issue. “ Reception must not be conditioned to get rid of the problem, by moving the borders of Europe towards the South, because we amplify the problem “, expressed one of the bishops of a North African country. “ We must defend human life, we cannot accept indifference that every day there are people dying in the desert or in the Mediterranean », insisted Cardinal Cristobal Lopez Romero, archbishop of Rabat. “ We must affirm the right to migration. To migrate or not to migrate is one of the human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must also call on European political leaders to practice an open and not just repressive migration policy. “.