‘Madness’: Pope Francis Denounces Attempts to Limit Migration from Southern Border

O’DONNELL (voice-over): “...in 1936 into a family of Italian immigrants. Before entering the seminary, Bergoglio worked as a chemist. His own personal formula is simplicity. He still wears the plain silver cross he wore as the archbishop of Buenos Aires, though it’s not what Francis wears, but where he lives that set the tone for his papacy eleven years ago. Instead of a palace above St. Peter’s square, he chose the Vatican guest house, Casa Santa Marta, as his home. We met him there under a painting of the Virgin Mary. Surrounded by the sacred, Francis has not forsaken his sense of humor, even when discussing serious subjects like the migrant crisis.”

O’DONNELL: “My grandparents were Catholic, immigrated from Northern Ireland in the 1930s to the United States seeking a better life. And I know your family, too, fled fascism, and you have talked about, with migrants, many of them children, that you encourage governments to build bridges, not walls.”
Pope Francis (via translator): “Migration is something that makes a country grow. They say that you, Irish, migrated and brought the whiskey, and that the Italians migrated and brought the mafia. It’s a joke, don’t take it badly. But migrants sometimes suffer a lot. They suffer a lot.”
O’DONNELL: “I grew up in Texas, and I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the state of Texas is attempting to shut down a Catholic charity on the border with Mexico that offers undocumented migrants humanitarian assistance. What do you think of that?”
Pope Francis (via translator): “That is Madness. Sheer Madness. To close the border and leave them there, that is Madness. The migrant has to be received. Thereafter you see how you’re going to deal with them. Maybe you have to send them back, I don’t know, but each case ought to be considered humanely, right?

O’DONNELL (voice-over): “A few months after becoming pope, Francis went to a small Italian island near Africa to meet migrants fleeing poverty and war.”

O’DONNELL: “Your first trip as pope was on island of Lampedusa, where you talked about suffering. And I was so struck when you talked about the globalization of indifference. What is happening?”
Pope Francis (via translator): “Do you want me to state it plainly? People Wash their hands. There are so many Pontius Pilates on the loose out there, who see what is happening, the wars, the injustice, the crime, ‘That’s okay, that’s okay,’ and Wash their hands. It’s indifference. That is what happens when the heart hardens and becomes indifferent. Please, we have to get our hearts to feel again. We cannot remain indifferent in the face of such human dramas. The globalization of indifference is a very ugly disease. Very ugly.”