(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 23 - The Mediterranean must return to being a "peace laboratory", said Pope Francis closing the Mediterranean Meetings in Marseille on Saturday.
    "This is its vocation: to be a place where different countries and realities meet on the basis of our shared humanity, not of opposing ideologies," he told his audience including French President Emmanuel Macron, French Interior Minister Gérard Darmnin, Central European Bank President Christine Lagarde and European Commissioner Margaritis Schinas, responsible for coordinating the Commission's work on a New Pact on Migration and Asylum.
    The Mediterranean, said the pope, is the expression of a "community way of thinking".
    "How much we need it at the present juncture, where antiquated and belligerent nationalisms want to end the dream of the community of nations!" said Francis.
    "But let us remember that with weapons one makes war, not peace, and with the hunger for power one always goes back to the past, rather than building the future," he added. (ANSA).