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Visiting the Greek island of Lesbos, Pope Francis called for an end to a “shipwreck of civilization” on Sunday in a moving speech at the Mavrovouni migrant camp, known for its migration tragedies. The pontiff described the Mediterranean Sea as a “cold cemetery without tombstones.”
In front of some 40 migrants, Pope Francis called on Sunday, December 5, to end what he called the “shipwreck of civilization” during a vibrant speech at the Mavrovouni migrant camp on Lesbos, five years after his first visit. to this emblematic Greek island of the migratory crisis.
The Mediterranean “is becoming a cold cemetery without tombstones (…) I beg you, let’s stop this shipwreck of civilization,” said the pontiff, on the second day of his visit to Greece, marked by a lightning visit to Lesbos .
In the Mavrovouni camp, which continues to host some 2,200 asylum seekers, the pope was warmly greeted by a crowd of migrants who had gathered among the camp’s containers and tents. The pontiff greeted and blessed the families present, including many children. “Welcome!”, “We love you”, it was heard.
Then, in a tent, he listened to the joyous songs of a choir of migrants, before expressing his sorrow that the Mediterranean, “cradle of so many civilizations”, is “now like a mirror of death”, remembering “the crude images of small bodies lying on the beaches.”
“Let us not allow the mare nostrum to become a desolate mare mortuum, that this meeting place become a theater of conflict! Let us not allow this sea of memories to become the sea of oblivion,” he told the Greek president. , Katerina Sakellaropoulou; the Vice President of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas and the Greek Minister of Migration, Notis Mitarachi.
Some 40 asylum seekers, mostly Catholics from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) then attended the prayer to the Virgin pronounced by the pope.
Earlier, Christian Tango, a 31-year-old Congolese, addressed the pope to thank him for the “spirit of humanity” that he “shows” to all his “migrant and refugee children”, before asking for his prayers “for a safe place in Europe” .
“We are humans, not prisoners”
“We are human, we are refugees. We must be treated as human beings and not as prisoners,” Congolese Orpheus Madouda, who attended the prayer, told AFP.
Almost 900 policemen were deployed on the Greek island. In the city of Mytilene and on the outskirts of the countryside, banners had flown to “welcome Pope Francis” or denounce the alleged return of migrants to Turkey.
The windy tent camp was hastily set up a year ago at a former Army firing range on the Aegean island, when the Moria structure, then the largest in Europe, was destroyed by fire.
When the island of Lesbos was the main gateway for tens of thousands of migrants to Europe, Pope Francis visited Moria in April 2016 and symbolically said: “We are all migrants.”
Leitmotif of his pontificate, the cause of refugees remains this time the cornerstone of the Pope’s 35th trip.
Jorge Bergoglio, who comes from a family of Italian emigrants residing in Argentina, has not stopped advocating for the reception of thousands of “brothers”, regardless of their religion, their refugee status or their economic exile.
The 84-year-old Argentine pontiff regretted this Saturday that “Europe persists in procrastinating” in the face of the arrival of migrants, “sometimes blocked” and “torn by nationalist selfishness”, “instead of being an engine of solidarity.”
Stop the return of migrants to Turkey
The pope considered the situation in Lesbos to be different from that of 2016, but some 40 NGOs have nonetheless urged Francis to intervene to stop the alleged return of migrants to Turkey, which Athens denies.
In a letter to the pope, they also denounce the creation of “closed and controlled access” camps in Greece, financed in part with European funds.
Surrounded by barbed wire and closed with X-ray gates, three such camps have already been opened on the islands of Samos, Leros and Kos, and those on Lesbos and Chios are scheduled to open next year.
The pontiff’s visit to Lesbos, shorter than in 2016, will continue in Athens with a mass before some 2,500 faithful in a huge concert hall.
With AFP
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