Hawzah News Agency (Vatican city State) -The mayors of eighty European cities will gather at the Vatican on December 9 and 10, for a meeting entitled “Europe: Refugees Are Our Brothers and Sisters.”

Italy will be represented, among others, by the mayors of Rome, Milan and Lampedusa: Virginia Raggi (who will meet the Pope on the previous day, for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), Giuseppe Sala and Giusi Nicolini. All will later be received by Pope Francis.

The greatest support for the initiative came in October from the mayors of Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, who decided to actively support the meeting, which follows a similar summit of mayors from around the world on the theme of sustainable development, held in July 2015 at the Vatican, with the participation, among others, of the mayors of New York, San Francisco, Madrid, Paris, Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, Kochi, Rome, Milan, Naples and Lampedusa. At the end of the summit, the mayors met the Pope.

The upcoming summit “was convened to draw international attention to the threat to world stability posed by the growing number of refugees in the world, a number that currently exceeds 125 million,” said the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

It is necessary that “the mayors, as the authorities closest to the citizens, make their expertise available to accommodate and regulate all migrants and refugees. The voice of the mayors must be heard, in order to foster the construction of bridges instead of walls. Their authority must be at the service of sustainable and global development, justice and peace.”

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