More than 2,000 plucked from sea
Pope blasts migrant suffering
BARCELONA, Spain, April 15, (Agencies): Spain’s maritime rescue said Saturday it has rescued 125 migrants trying to make nighttime crossings from Africa in three smuggling boats.
All three of the small boats were located before daybreak on Saturday.
The first boat, carrying 41 men and 11 women of sub-Saharan origin, was located by rescue teams shortly after midnight in the Alboran Sea east of the Strait of Gibraltar. The Red Cross said all were in good health.
A second group of 62 North African males, including 11 minors, was packed into a wooden boat when rescued just west of the Strait in the Atlantic Ocean.
Eleven more migrants of unknown origin were pulled from a small vessel in the Mediterranean Sea after a NATO aircraft alerted the maritime rescue service.
Tens of thousands of migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan African countries, try to reach the shores of Spain and Italy by boat each year.
Between Thursday and Friday, 73 migrants were rescued from five boats by Spanish ships.
On Wednesday, a 10-year-old girl and two adults died when their boat capsized while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Spain.
An official of Spain’s rescue service confirmed the details of Saturday’s operations speaking anonymously in line with institution policy.
Meanwhile, more than 2,000 migrants trying to reach Europe were plucked from the Mediterranean on Friday in a series of dramatic rescues and one person was found dead, officials and witnesses said.
An Italian coast guard spokesman said 19 rescue operations by the coast guard or ships operated by non-governmental organisations had saved a total of 2,074 migrants on 16 rubber dinghies and three small wooden boats.
The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said in a tweet that one teenager was found dead in a rubber boat whose passengers were rescued by its ship Aquarius.
“The sea continues to be a graveyard,” MSF said in a Tweet.
The coast guard spokesman confirmed that one person had died but gave no details.
MSF said two of their ships, Aquarius and Prudence, had rescued about 1,000 people in nine boats.
Desperate refugees struggled to stay afloat after they slid off their rubber boat during a rescue operation by the Phoenix, a ship of the rescue group Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS).
Video footage showed rescuers jumping into the water off the coast of Libya to help them.
Story
“In 19 years of covering the migration story, I have never experienced anything like today,” said Reuters photographer Darrin Zammit Lupi, who was aboard the Phoenix.
In one operation, the Phoenix rescued 134 people, all from sub-Saharan counties, he said.
Those rescued by the MOAS and MSF ships were transferred to Italian coast guard ships, which had rescued other migrants, to be taken to Italian ports.
According to the International Organisation for Migration, nearly 32,000 migrants have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year. More than 650 have died or are missing.
In related news, Pope Francis deplored the suffering of migrants, victims of racism and persecuted Christians as some 20,000 worshippers gathered at Rome’s Colosseum to hear his Good Friday prayer.
“Christ, our only saviour, we turn towards you this year with eyes lowered in shame,” the pope told the crowds outside the former gladiators’ battleground, their faces lit by candlelight.
“Shame for all the images of devastation, destruction and shipwrecks which have become ordinary in our lives,” Francis said in an apparent reference to Mediterranean migrant disasters that have left at least 590 people feared people dead this year.
The pope also spoke of the child abuse scandals that have rocked Catholicism in recent years, expressing “shame for all the times when bishops, priests and the religious have scandalised and hurt” the Church.
“Shame for the innocent blood, spilt daily, of women, children, migrants, people persecuted for the colour of their skin or for their social or ethnic group — or for their faith in you,” he said.
The Easter holy week commemorating the last days of Jesus’s life had a bloody beginning last Sunday with attacks claimed by the Islamic State group on two Coptic churches in Egypt that left 45 people dead.
Fasting
Egyptian Copts observed a solemn Good Friday with prayers and fasting, as the community reeled from the bombings. Despite concerns over security, Francis is planning to go ahead with a visit to the country later this month.
In Rome, security was tight for the night-time ceremony, with road blocks and metal detectors in place as worshippers gathered to hear the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics. Three thousand officers were deployed to protect the Colosseum.
This year an Egyptian couple and their three young daughters carried a large cross for part of the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession, descending through the Colosseum and then outside into the crowd.
Worshippers from Portugal and Colombia — two countries the pontiff is set to visit in May and September respectively — also took part in the procession, taking turns to carry the cross along with two Chinese Christians.
A small group of believers carry a cross between 14 “stations” evoking the hours in the run-up to Jesus’s crucifixion during the Via Crucis procession.
Francis, 80, sat under his traditional red canopy next to a large cross lit with torchlight for the ceremony, which for the first time included a meditation written by a secular woman, French professor AnneMarie Pelletier.
Good Friday is the second of four important days in the Christian calendar beginning with Maundy Thursday and culminating in Easter Sunday, which commemorates Christ’s resurrection.
On Saturday, the pontiff will take part in an evening Easter vigil in St Peter’s Basilica, before celebrating Easter mass on Sunday and pronouncing the traditional “Urbi et Orbi” blessing to Rome and the world.