I don’t know whether his views on this matter are driven by authoritarianism (Peronism dies hard), a theocratic contempt for national borders or simple bone-headedness, but, in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica Pope Francis has now come out in favor of a federal Europe, well, soonish.
l’Europa deve assumere al più presto una struttura federale.
In the same interview, the Pope had this to say (translation via AFP):
“I worry about very dangerous alliances between powers which have a distorted vision of the world: America and Russia, China and North Korea, Putin and Assad over the war in Syria…”
So Pope Francis thinks that America has a “distorted vision of the world”? Say what you will, the man has chutzpah.
Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa may be turning into something of a disappointment to the Pope. Lampedusa, which is just off the North African coast, has become a landing point for many of the migrants headed Europe’s way and, for others, tragically, a last resting place, something that prompted Francis to choose the island as the site of his first official visit outside Rome after becoming pope in 2013.
While he was there he gave a talk on the topic of immigration that displayed both the demagogic skills and profound intellectual dishonesty that have become a recurring theme of his papacy. I’ve blogged about that talk a few times. Theodore Dalrymple filleted it here. This extract gives a flavor:
By elevating feeling over thought, by making compassion the measure of all things, the Pope was able to evade the complexities of the situation, in effect indulging in one of the characteristic vices of our time, moral exhibitionism, which is the espousal of generous sentiment without the pain of having to think of the costs to other people of the implied (but unstated) morally-appropriate policy…..
The Pope’s use of a term such as ‘those who take the socio-economic decisions in anonymity’ was strong on connotation but weak on denotation, itself a sign of intellectual evasion. Who, exactly, were ‘those’ people? Wall Street hedge fund managers, the International Monetary Fund, opponents of free trade, African dictators? Was he saying that the whole world economic system was to blame for the migration across the Mediterranean, that the existence of borders was illegitimate, that Denmark (for example) was rich because Swaziland was poor, that if only Lesotho were brought up to the level of Liechtenstein (or, of course, if Liechtenstein were brought down to the level of Lesotho) no one would drown in the Mediterranean? There was something for everyone’s conspiracy theory in his words….
Note also a few of the facts and figures that Dalrymple cites:
Lampedusa is an Italian island of 8 square miles with a permanent population of 6000, which so far this year has received 7800 migrants trying to reach Europe across the Mediterranean from sub-Saharan and North Africa, that is to say more than 1000 a month. When the Pope officiated at mass on the island’s sports field, there were 10,000 in the congregation, two thirds more than the permanent population…
Now fast forward to 2017, and this report in the Guardian:
Anyone looking for an insight into the growing disillusionment of ordinary Italians as their country is left to deal alone with a summer surge of migrants on its southern shores should contemplate the fate of Giusi Nicolini, the former mayor of Lampedusa.
Earlier this year Nicolini won Unesco’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny peace prize for the “great humanity and constant commitment” with which she has managed a migration crisis that began in earnest during the summer of 2011, as the Arab spring turned north African societies upside down.
A politician from the centre-left Democratic party, Nicolini also won the Olof Palme prize in 2016 and was among the Italians celebrated at a dinner with former US president Barack Obama at the White House in October.
But as she travelled the world and courted the media, regularly appearing on Italian TV and portraying the tiny island of around 6,000 people as a safe haven for migrants, discontent simmered back on Lampedusa, closer to Tunisia than mainland Italy, where she held office. Islanders made their feelings known last month when Nicolini was resoundingly ousted from her post, coming third in municipal elections with just 908 votes.
“It wasn’t a surprise to us that she lost,” said Salvatore Martello, a hotel owner and fisherman who won the election running independently from Italy’s main parties. “In the years she was mayor, she curated an image abroad of the island and the migrant situation, forgetting its people.”
…“People didn’t like Nicolini because she put herself first,” said Vincenzo Esposito, a fisherman for 50 years. “Yes, it was right to help migrants, but millions have been spent on that and not on our basic needs….”
“Moral exhibitionism,” that was the term that Dalrymple used. Works well, I think.