Image Credit: FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty Images 
Pope Francis had a special message for Western Christians on Good Friday: repent for your racism.
In a Good Friday interview with Italian-based reporter Lorena Bianchetti, the pontiff declared migrants are “subdivided” by skin color and country of origin by the West.
“Refugees are subdivided,” the Francis said. “There’s first class, second class, skin color, [whether] they come from a developed country [or] one that is not developed.”
“We are racists, we are racists. And this is bad,” the pope added.
Pope Francis is wrapping up Good Friday events at the Colosseum with a Stations of the Cross procession, after criticizing the West for only caring about refugees based on certain characteristics.
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Francis likened the flood of migrants into Europe and the US to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph’s escape to Egypt from King Herod, who was on the hunt to kill baby Jesus.
“The problem of the refugees is a problem that Jesus suffered too, because he was a migrant and a refugee in Egypt when he was a child, to escape death,” he said. “How many of them are suffering to escape death!”
Francis presided over the Stations of the Cross ceremony Friday evening at the Colosseum, which featured a migrant family presenting a reflection for the 14th and final station, the placing of Christ’s lifeless body in the tomb after his crucifixion.
“Now we are here. We have died to our past. We wanted to live in our own land but war prevented that,” the text reads. “It is difficult for a family to have to choose between its dreams and its freedom, between its hopes and survival.”
Francis has been a vocal proponent of flooding migrants into Western Europe, which even former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted has resulted in a crisis of high violent crime and cultural division in the continent.
Watch the Stations of the Cross in full: