(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis’ meeting with an illegal immigrant who later burned a French cathedral and murdered a Catholic priest is getting renewed attention as the Vatican continues to encourage mass migration.
Commentators noted the connection between Francis and the killer, Rwandan asylum seeker Emmanuel Abayisenga, in response to a viral video showing Pope Leo XIV welcoming a group of migrants who had just arrived by boat in Sicily.
Francis had greeted Abayisenga in 2016 during an audience for “socially excluded people.”
The event in the Vatican was part of the “European Festival of Joy and Mercy” amid Francis’ Jubilee of Mercy.
The French newspaper La Croix reported the meeting in 2021 after Abayisenga’s arrest for brutally murdering Fr. Olivier Maire.
The migrant beat to death Fr. Maire, the French provincial superior of the Montfort Missionaries, that August.
Abayisenga had spent several months in prison for setting fire to the 15th century Nantes Cathedral the previous year. The fire, which took around 100 firefighters to extinguish, destroyed the church’s main organ and shattered stained glass windows.
“Arriving in the city in 2012, the Rwandan placed himself under the protection of the local Christian community,” according to La Croix.
Abayisenga was released in May 2021 on the condition that he reside at Fr. Maire’s Montfortian community in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre. He killed the priest shortly after returning to the community following a psychiatric hospitalization.
Abayisenga’s trial concluded this January. A French court sentenced him to 30 years in prison and deportation after the completion of his sentence.
The migrant’s family had participated in the Rwanda genocide against the Tutsi people, La Croix reported.
Francis had claimed at the “Jubilee for Socially Excluded People” in 2016 that the poor are “more inclined to be artisans of peace.” He made numerous other questionable and provocative statements, such as that “all religions need to grow in peace” and “all religions are messengers of peace.”
“Help them, each of you within your own religion,” he told participants.
Francis was known for his radical approach to immigration, insisting that migrants must be “welcomed, accompanied, supported, and integrated.” He notably equated “the situation of migrants” with the killing of hundreds of millions of unborn children in abortion.
Church teaching, however, recognizes that countries may restrict immigration and that migrants are obliged to obey the laws of their host countries. Abortion, moreover, is “the most serious injustice today,” as Pope Benedict XVI stressed.
Pope Leo has continued Francis’ strong emphasis on immigration and, like Francis, sharply criticized the Trump administration’s border policies while taking a friendly approach to left-wing politicians who promote abortion, LGBT ideology, and other grave evils.
Massive immigration to Europe in recent years, particularly from Muslim-majority countries, has led to a rise in Islamic, anti-Christian violence, including in France, where jihadists have murdered and beaten priests and other Catholics and attacked numerous churches.