Pope Francis met with President Emmanuel Macron of France on Saturday on the second day of a whirlwind journey to Marseille, a port metropolis within the nation’s south the place the pontiff issued a forceful condemnation of the world’s indifference towards the deaths of migrants making an attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

Thousands of cops blanketed the town early Saturday and blocked visitors across the Palais du Pharo, a Nineteenth-century palace overlooking the town’s previous port. Mr. Macron and Francis met there, although the pope’s journey was not an official state go to.

Both are attending the closing session of the Mediterranean Meetings, a weeklong gathering of bishops and different representatives. Mr. Macron and the pope are to fulfill once more one on one after the closing session and earlier than a large Mass later within the afternoon at Marseille’s soccer stadium.

The Rev. Vito Impellizzeri, a professor on the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Sicily, who attended the gathering, stated the pope was coming to assist shift perceptions of the Mediterranean.

“It should not simply be the tomb and clash of civilizations,” he stated, but in addition “a space of reciprocity and encounters.”

Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesman, advised reporters earlier this week that the pope would additionally focus on the conflict in Ukraine and environmental points in Marseille.

But the pope has centered a lot of his journey to this point on the plight of migrants making an attempt the dangerous Mediterranean crossing from North and sub-Saharan Africa to Europe. On Friday, at a memorial for sailors and migrants misplaced at sea that sits on a hill overlooking Marseille’s glittering harbor, he stated the world was “at a crossroads of civilization,” caught between a tradition of “fraternity” or certainly one of “indifference.”

“This beautiful sea has become a huge cemetery, where many brothers and sisters are deprived even of the right to a grave,” Francis stated. “Being buried at sea is the only dignity given to them.”

In a gathering that was closed to the press, the pope met privately early Saturday with individuals “in a situation of economic hardship” at a charity home within the heart of Marseille, based on the Vatican.

Tens of 1000’s are anticipated to line the streets later within the day as Francis is pushed to the Vélodrome, the soccer stadium in Marseille — the place devotion to the local team is a religion of its personal.

Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, the archbishop of Marseille, who helped orchestrate the pope’s journey, said in an interview with the daily Le Parisien this week that Francis had advised him, “If I go to Paris, I will see protocol; in Marseille, I will see the people.”

“That’s why we chose the Vélodrome,” Cardinal Aveline stated. “At the stadium, it’s like going into the home of each Marseillais.”

He added, “Marseille attracts him because it’s a periphery, between Europe and the Mediterranean, Orient and Occident, and in particular because it is a place of fracture.”

Francis has lengthy most popular touring to the world’s fringes relatively than its energy facilities.

Marseille, a gritty, sprawling metropolis of about 870,000, is stricken by pockets of extreme poverty, strained social providers and deadly drug-related violence. But it is usually certainly one of France’s oldest and most cosmopolitan cities, a predominantly working-class patchwork of ethnic and non secular communities that has been formed by waves of immigration from Europe and Africa.

“It’s a city that suits the pope,” stated Isabelle de Gaulmyn, a high editor at La Croix, France’s main Catholic newspaper.

Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.