Pope Francis has returned to Lesbos, a Greek island that has long been at the center of the European refugee crisis, to provide comfort to asylum seekers and to provide harsh words to the continent that often rejects them.
Five years after his last visit, the Pope warned the West to deal with humanitarian crises. He said it did not welcome people fleeing poverty and war, and its indifference and cynical indifference continued to sentence people to death.
The Pope said to a group of immigrants on Sunday: “Sisters and brothers, I came to Lesbos to say that I am very close to you, looking at your eyes full of fear and anticipation, those who see violence and poverty. Eyes. “Immigration is a humanitarian crisis for everyone. “
Francis came to the island at the height of the immigration incident in 2016, and this iconic move is regarded as the decisive moment for his pope. There, he flew back to Rome with a group of Syrian refugees and conveyed a message to European political elites. airplane. This gesture seems to usher in a new era of compassion and goodwill for those seeking comfort, often in the face of great adversity.
However, Europe has not learned from history. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church On Sunday, when he addressed asylum seekers and officials gathered under a tent in an immigration camp, he lamented. The Pope said that in the years that followed, the Mediterranean was allowed to become a “desolate sea of death”, where smuggling ships crowded with desperate people sank.
“Please let us stop this civilized shipwreck,” he added, regretting the decision taken by many EU countries to build walls along the border to keep refugees out.
When talking about Greek officials, including the country’s President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, the pope said during her visit to Lesbos: “I ask each of us, all of us, to overcome our fears. The paralysis, indifference leads to death, cynical ignorance, indifference to those who are on the margins and sentenced to death.”
Later this month, Francis, who was over 85 years old, looked excited when he patted the children on the head and interacted with the men and women in a row around the facility.
The pope himself was the son of an Italian immigrant who moved to Argentina, and he made the protection of refugees the cornerstone of his eight-year pope term.
On Saturday, shortly after arriving in Athens on the second leg of his five-day Mediterranean tour, he also included Cyprus, criticizing Europe’s differences in immigration. warn Oppose the dangers of populism and express concern about the regression of democracy on a global scale.
In Cyprus, his first stop, the Pope condemned the “slavery” and “torture” frequently suffered by those fleeing war and poverty.
“It reminds us of the history of the last century, the history of Nazis and Stalin,” he said at a prayer ceremony for immigrants who gathered on the island, the divided capital Nicosia. “We want to know how this happens.”
But Francis, he arranged move Among the 50 asylum seekers from Cyprus to Rome, he retained his harshest language for the end of his trip to Greece.
He cited Athens as not only the birthplace of democracy, but also the place where “human beings first realized that they are a political animal”. He expressed the fear of disillusionment seduced by the “Song of the Authoritarian Siren” and warned against populism. The authors promised popular but impractical solutions.
Nearly 1 million people, many of them fled the war in Syria, crossing Greece Between 2015 and 2016. Lesbos is by far the busiest entry point, with hundreds of people landing on its coast every day in dinghy and other rickety boats.
