VATICAN CITY — The refusal to help desperate migrants “is revolting, it’s sinful, it’s criminal,” Pope Francis said as he canonized a bishop dedicated to assisting migrants and a Salesian brother who had immigrated with his family to Argentina.

“The exclusion of migrants is criminal. It makes them die in front of us,” the pope said Oct. 9, referring to the deaths of migrants and refugees crossing dangerous seas in search of freedom and a dignified life.

At the beginning of the liturgy in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis formally recognized the holiness of St. Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, an Italian who founded the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo to care for migrants, and St. Artemide Zatti, an Italian immigrant in Argentina who became a Salesian brother, pharmacist and nurse.

Pope Francis focused much of his homily on the day’s Gospel reading about the 10 lepers healed by Jesus and, therefore, allowed back into society.

“When we are honest with ourselves, we realize that we are all sick at heart, all sinners in need of the Father’s mercy,” the pope said. “Then we stop creating divisions on the basis of merit, social position or some other superficial criterion; our interior barriers and prejudices likewise fall. In the end, we realize once more that we are brothers and sisters.”

Pope Francis asked the estimated 50,000 people at the Mass to think about whether in their families, at work and in their parishes, they are willing to walk with others and listen to them, “resisting the temptation to lock ourselves up in self-absorption and to think only of our own needs.”

The pope said he is “troubled” when he sees Christians who tend to divide the world into “the good and the bad, saints and sinners; this makes them feel superior to others and exclude so many people that God wants to embrace.”

Both the Church and society, he said, are “still marred by many forms of inequality and marginalization.”

Sts. Scalabrini and Zatti, the pope said, fought against such attitudes, dedicating their lives to the service of the poor, migrants and the sick.

“Today, the day on which Bishop Scalabrini becomes a saint, I think of migrants. The exclusion of migrants is scandalous,” he said. “Actually, the exclusion of migrants is criminal.”

“With great vision,” the pope said, St. Scalabrini “looked forward to a world and a Church without barriers, where no one was a foreigner.”

“For his part, the Salesian Brother Artemide Zatti – with his bicycle — was a living example of gratitude,” the pope said. “He devoted his entire life to serving others, caring for the infirm with tender love.”