A small, all-white Fiat 500 among the police cars with black windows. And him, sitting in front, window down, to greet the people of Marseille. Early, very early, Saturday September 23, Pope Francis resumed the visit begun the day before, a Friday which was full of symbols and popular emotions, including because everyone understood that the coming to this city in the south of the France for this tired man was perhaps his last outside of Rome. “I think that this evening, even the Good Mother has a tear in her eye”launched the Archbishop of Marseille, Mgr Jean-Marc Aveline, taking leave of his friend François.
Friday, at the end of a parking lot, in the refined setting of a Camargue cross as if silhouetted against a sea ruffled by the mistral, the pope criticized the “virus of extremism »And “the dictatorship of indifference” with regard to shipwrecks and drowned people that each “gets used to” to be considered as ” various facts “ And “numbers”without “faces” neither ” historys ».
Among these victims, Moussa. The pontiff was able to shake the hands of the young 23-year-old Guinean saved by‘Aquariusthe first ship of the humanitarian association SOS Méditerranée, and kindly thank association leaders by adding this sentence: “I am very happy to see many of you here, you who go to sea to save migrants, [alors que] often you are prevented from doing so [dans] gestures of hatred. » Some saw it as a very political warning to France and Italy.
The Pope’s Saturday in Marseille began with a “breakfast with the poor”. The meeting took place at the Sisters of Charity, Saint-Maura district in the IIIe district of the city. Initially, the meeting was to be held at the archbishopric; but at the last minute, Francis changed the program to go to Mother Teresa’s missionaries, in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. Outside the mission, the neighbors can’t believe their eyes. The Pope, here, between a food discount and two halal snacks? On the phone, in Arabic, a passerby tries to convince his wife.
The nuns place a blue and white necklace around the neck of their host and sing while clapping their hands. ” I’m glad to be here »in a place “where people hold each other’s hands »says François. “Abdullah, have you come to see the Holy Father? “, calls out Louise Contri, 74 years old, forty-two of whom are in the neighborhood serving the parish as volunteers. “People here call me Louise from the churchshe says. Compassion is all this pope asks of us. Let us apply the Gospel. This bothers some people because there are a lot of foreigners in the neighborhood. »
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