Blocking boats, ships doesn’t solve migrant problem - Pope

ANSA) - Vatican City, December 19 - Pope Francis said Thursday that closing ports is not the way to stop the flow of migrants. “It is not by blocking the ships that the problem is solved,” the pope said as he greeted 33 refugees recently arrived in Italy from the Greek island of Lesbos through a humanitarian corridor after the Vatican’s intervention. “Serious efforts must be made to empty the detention camps in Libya, evaluating and implementing all possible solutions.”We must denounce and prosecute traffickers who exploit and abuse migrants. “Economic interests must be put aside in order to focus on the person, each person, whose life and dignity are precious in the eyes of God.

“We must help and save, because we are all responsible for the life of our neighbour, and the Lord will ask us to account for this at the moment of judgment.”