Pope: Migrants begged for help at sea, shamefully ignored

Pope Francis has decried that 130 migrants died in the Mediterranean after begging in vain for help for two days last week

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis on Sunday decried as shameful the deaths of 130 migrants in the Mediterranean, saying they pleaded for two days for help for their overcrowded, foundering rubber dinghy in the sea off Libya but potential rescuers choose “to look the other way." Francis called the sea tragedy last week “a moment of shame.” The migrants had made a call for help on Wednesday. On Thursday, when a humanitarian rescue boat and a merchant ship in the area that sailed in very rough waters arrived at the scene, the deflating dinghy had partially sunk, several bodies were seen in the water and no survivors were found. Rescue centers in Libya, Malta and Italy had been alerted, according to the European Union border protection agency Frontex, one of whose planes had located the dinghy. "I confess to you I am very pained by the tragedy that once again played out in the last days in the Mediterranean,'' the pope told people who had gathered in St. Peter's Square to hear his traditional Sunday noon remarks delivered from a window overlooking the square.