Poster from Mali saying "Stop illegal immigration" and the ironic catchline "My Eldorado is Mali" seeks to instruct intending emigrants on how to do things right.
The pope's obsessive concern with migrants
By Marco Tosatti
Translated from
STILUM CURIAE
February 14, 2018
Holiness, give us some respite!
You have bewailed what you called an 'obsessive concern' on issues regarding life, implicitly criticizing your precedessors and saints of the caliber of Mother Teresa who constantly fought against abortion [and other, for them, non-negotiable issues about the sanctity of human life and the family[] –
but you have instead made us Catholics and other citizens of this unfortunate nation endure your obsessive 'pastoral' concern for migrants [who are overwhelmingly non-Christian, so it beggars belief why he should be 'pastoral' about them while failing the flock he was elected to lead!].
And excuse me, but even the lies claiming the Church does not 'do' politics cannot stand up. Of course, 'the church', such as she is today, does politics. As the Genoan shipowner in the joke commented upon learning of a colleague's suicide, "It must have been convenient!", we can well imagine that the Church in Italy finds some convenience in this business involving millions and millions of euros having to do with 'welcoming' undocumented migrants.
But you are the pope – and even if you do not care a whit about this devastated country, even if you only read one Italian newspaper (which also happens to be the most leftist, the most Sorosian and the most pro-Partita Democrata there is), even if your advisers are who they are and they only tell you things in a certain way – given all of that,
don’t you think that the frequency with which you speak about this issue is truly obsessive? [As usual with Bergoglio, he can never see the log of prejudice in his eye while he points out the motes in others' eyes!]
Yesterday, we read your Twitter feed that seemed prompted only so as not to run the risk that we would be deprived a single day without being reminded of it: "With the spirit of mercy let us welcome the victims of human trafficking and those who are fleeing from war and hunger".
Yet just two days before that, we also read that you said, "So many times, migrants are besmirched by unkind comments", to young people meeting to discuss the problem of human trafficking. "A few months ago, I saw a newspaper headline about a small city [in Italy]: 'the city where the most rapes were committed this year, and 40% of the rapists were migrants'. That's one way of smearing them. And who were the other 60 percent? Italians! It's a way of presenting things which twists the truth".
[Dear Lord, this man has a real talent for 'twisting the truth', because it is he who habitually does that! Remember when he likened jihadist terrorist crimes with domestic violence crimes in Italy? Considering that migrants now constitute less than 10 percent of the Italian population, it means, roughly, that 10 percent in a given community are responsible for 40% of rapes. Yet even just one rapist among them would be reprehensible enough and unacceptable!]
Then you told them:
"Don't be afraid of meeting the migrants. Open up your hearts and let them come in" because "you can encounter Christ in these people who have left their homes and remain trapped in the net of slavery". And you told the story of a girl who was 'deceived by a very Catholic lady' – she arrived in Italy and was "then enchained in prostitution". And when she was rescued from that life and brought to an institution headed by a sister, "she did not wish to enter because it had been a very Catholic lady who had deceived her and made her a slave".
He couldn't resist that jab against 'the very Catholic lady' since we know that many Catholics are not at all to this pope's liking. But it would be useful to read what the current statistics show about crime in Italy.
Comparing the percentage of foreigners in Italy against the percentage of foreigners responsible for major crimes.
Keep in mind that non-Italians make up only 8 percent of the country's population. Regardless, we don't really need to increase our native criminal fauna by importing more of them!
A Brussels [i.e, EU] agency that tracks these things tells us that in January 2018, 4,800 undocumented migrants arrived in Italy after crossing the Mediterranean – a number double that in December 2017. Rightly, Bergoglio speaks of those victims of human trafficking, namely, those who gladly pay the traffickers to facilitate their departure from their homeland for Europe.
But is not the constant drumroll of calls by the pope and his representatives in the Italian Church to welcome any and all migrants partly responsible for 'stimulating' the phenomenon? That's not exactly combating a phenomenon expressly denounced by the bishops and government leaders in the migrants' countries of origin (mostly Africa). If I know that I will be welcomed with open arms
[and the blessing of the pope, no less], then of course, I would risk leaving home. Otherwise, why should I set forth on a hopeless venture
[and pay a fortune to do so]?