The Pope Francisco visited this Sunday the migrant center on the Greek island of Lesbos, where he had already been five years ago, and criticized the indifference of some European countries before pleading: “Let’s stop this wreck of civilization“.” Let us not let the mare nostrum become a bleak mare mortum, nor that this meeting place becomes a conflict scenario“he cried, from the new Kara Tepe field before about 200 people, representatives of refugees, aid workers and also the Greek president, Katerina Sakelaropulu.
After having affectionately greeted many migrants during a walking tour through the countryside, the pontiff sent a long and harsh message in which he verified that migrations “they are a problem of the world“,” a humanitarian crisis that concerns everyone“, but which nobody seems to be taking care of, despite the fact that” people, human lives are at stake. “” I am here to tell you that I am close to you; I am here to see your faces, to look into your eyes: eyes full of fear and hope, eyes that have seen violence and poverty, eyes streaked with too many tears“, he asserted in his speech.
“Mirror of death”
Francis insisted a lot on visiting Lesbos again during his trip to Greece to refocus on the migration issue, although the situation in the new countryside, in which about 2,200 people live, almost 70% Afghans and a third of them minors, it is somewhat better than the one visited in 2016, which was home to more than 10,000 people. “Let us not quickly escape the stark images of his little lifeless bodies on the beaches, “exclaimed Francisco, remembering the children killed in shipwrecks.
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Sitting in a large and simple white tent, like the ones set up for migrants, with the sea as a background, the pope lamented that the Mediterranean is turning into “a cold graveyard with no headstone“and” a mirror of death. “According to the Organization for Migration (IOM), So far this year an estimated 1,600 migrants have died trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean, up from 23,000 since 2014.
Francisco criticized “the fear paralysis, the indifference that kills, the cynical disinterest that with silk gloves condemns those on the margins to death “and asked to confront” from its roots to the dominant thought, which revolves around one’s own self, one’s own personal and national egoisms, which become the measure and criterion of everything. “For the Pope,” little has changed on the migration issue “since he came to the island five years ago from Lesbos: “In Europe there are still people who persist in treating the problem as an issue that does not concern them. It’s tragic. “
Reference-www.elperiodico.com