Pope pleads for migrants at Christmas mass

Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis in his Christmas eve mass Sunday urged the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics not to ignore the plight of migrants who are “driven from their land” because of leaders willing to shed “innocent blood”.   

“So many other footsteps are hidden in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary,” the Argentine pontiff, himself the grandson of Italian migrants, told worshippers in Saint Peter’s Basilica.   

“We see the tracks of millions of persons who do not choose to go away but, driven from their land, leave behind their dear ones.”