Pope travels to Lampedusa to remember immigrants who didn't make it - "Don't give in to the globalisation of indifference"


 
From Vatican Radio:

Pope Francis travelled on Monday to the tiny Sicilian island of Lampedusa. He threw a wreath of flowers into the sea to remember the thousands of migrants who have died making the journey to Italy from Africa. He then met with several migrants, thanking them for their welcome. The highlight of the day was a Mass celebrated in the island’s sports stadium, which served as a reception centre for the thousands of people who fled the upheavals caused by the Arab Spring unrest in North Africa, as well as refugees from poverty and violence in other parts of Africa...........

Pope Francis said he came to Lampedusa “today to pray, to make a gesture of closeness, but also to reawaken our consciences so that what happened would not be repeated.” 

The Holy Father wore violet vestments during the Mass, calling it a “liturgy of repentance.”

“God asks each one of us: Where is the blood of your brother that cries out to me?,” Pope Francis said during his homily, quoting from the Genesis story of Cain and Abel. “Today no one in the world feels responsible for this; we have lost the sense of fraternal responsibility.”

“The culture of well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference to others, that brings even the globalization of indifference,” he continued. “In this world of globalization we have fallen into a globalization of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn’t concern us, it’s none of our business.”

Read full Vatican Radio report HERE.

Read full text of homily HERE