ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS TO MEMBERS OF THE ITALIAN FOREIGN PRESS ASSOCIATION
Clementine Hall
[…]
This is why I want to thank you for what you do. Because you help us not to forget the
lives that are suffocated before they are even born; those who, as soon as they are
born, are extinguished by hunger, hardship, lack of care, wars; the lives of child
soldiers, the lives of violated children. Help us not to forget the many women and men
persecuted for their faith or their ethnicity. If I may ask a question, who speaks today
about the Rohingya? Who speaks today about the Yazidis? They are forgotten yet they
continue to suffer. Help us not to forget that those forced – by calamities, wars,
terrorism, hunger and thirst – to leave their homeland are not numbers, but faces,
stories, a yearning for happiness. Your President spoke about migrants: we must not
forget this Mediterranean, which is turning into a cemetery. […]
