The Presidents of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the European Council, António Costa, will travel to Rome to attend the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday 26 April.
The three political leaders paid tribute to the memory of the Roman Catholic pontiff on the news of his death on Easter Monday, 21 April.
“Europe mourns the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis. (...) The ‘People’s Pope’ will be remembered for his love for life, hope for peace, compassion for equality and social justice”, said Ms Metsola on her social media pages.
For Ms von der Leyen, the millions of bereaved will find “solace in the idea that Pope Francis’ legacy will continue to guide us all toward a more just, peaceful and compassionate world”.
For his part, Mr Costa welcomed Pope Francis’ concern for “great global challenges of our time – migration, climate change, inequalities, peace”. He went on to point out that, on the World Day of Peace, the pontiff had proposed “three actions to bring about ‘lasting change’: the cancellation of international debt, the abolition of the death penalty, and the reallocation of military funds to the fight against hunger”.
On Tuesday, European flags were flown at half-mast in front of the EU institutions in Brussels.
In the European Parliament, there were many reactions to the death of Pope Francis. The chairman of the EPP group, Germany’s Manfred Weber, paid tribute to “a great master of the faith, a great friend of humanity”. The leader of the S&D group, Spain’s Iratxe García Pérez, highlighted “his compassion, his altruism and his commitment to social justice”. On behalf of the ECR group, Nicola Procaccini from Italy praised the “simple and good-natured humility, evangelical charisma and commitment to peace” of the first Jesuit to become Pope. The president of the PfE group, France’s Jordan Bardella, said that Pope Francis’ pontificate had been marked by “constant attention to the forgotten and to the dignity of the most vulnerable”.
On his first official trip, in 2013, the Pope visited the Italian island of Lampedusa, where many undocumented migrants disembark, criticising the world’s indifference to their plight. He often criticised the EU’s restrictive migration policies.
In May 2016, while receiving the ‘Charlemagne Prize’ for personalities committed to European unification (see EUROPE 11547/20), Pope Francis questioned a Europe that was giving in to “selfishness”, inviting Europeans to bear in mind that “the European identity is, and always has been, a dynamic and multicultural identity”. In November 2014, in Strasbourg, before the European Parliament (see EUROPE 11204/5) and the Council of Europe (see EUROPE 11205/30), he lamented that the great ideals that inspired Europe had “lost their attractive force in favour of the bureaucratic technique of its institutions”.
In March 2013, the former Presidents of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, took part in the mass inaugurating the pontificate of Pope Francis (see EUROPE 10806/9). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)