Pope visits migrants, challenges Europe
Stop ‘this shipwreck of civilization,’ Francis says, condemning conditions at camps
LESBOS, Greece — Pope Francis ventured Sunday into a razor wire-fenced camp for asylum-seekers on this island in the Aegean Sea and told the people held there that Europe’s response has been defensive and inhumane, and has fallen short of its purported values.
“Human lives, real people, are at stake!” Francis said.
For many at the camp, sealed off from the outside world, their plight hidden, the pope’s visit punctured the bubble. Asylum-seekers lined up before the pontiff ’s arrival and reached to touch him or hug him when he exited the popemobile.
Unmasked, and at times relying on a nearby priest for support walking, the pontiff spent 20 minutes shaking hundreds of hands.
Yet, in returning for the first time in five years to this island at the front line of Europe’s immigration response, Francis also confronted the limits of his own ability to influence opinions and shape policy. His ideas, once part of a European debate over the proper approach to migration from Afghanistan, Syria and other countries, now run clearly counter to the continent’s political mainstream.
And a recent flash point on the border with Belarus showed the prevailing sentiment in the bloc: Keep migrants from entering.
Francis, speaking in a white tent with several dozen migrants, vented his frustration. Progress on migration, he said, has been “terribly absent.”
“Let us stop ignoring reality,” Francis said. “How many conditions exist that are unworthy of human beings? How many hotspots [are there] where migrants and refugees live in borderline conditions, without glimpsing solutions on the horizon?”
The pope’s previous visit to Lesbos came in 2016, a trip most remembered for Francis’s dramatic move of flying back to Rome with 12 Syrians aboard the papal plane. It came in the immediate aftermath of a huge migration wave, as the repercussions of that influx were starting to emerge.
Five years later, Lesbos has become as good a place as any to see what has changed.
Near villages where fishermen once helped migrants come ashore, Greek security forces now are accused of pushing migrants back into Turkish waters, in violation of international law.
Those migrants who do have the luck to reach Greek soil are taken to a tightly controlled camp where most are allowed to leave only two days per week.
A new decree has reduced the likelihood that migrants will receive protection. Greek newspapers are increasingly referring to the arrivals as “illegal migrants” rather than asylum-seekers.
The wind-whipped camp, hard by the sea, is about five minutes away from the island’s largest city.
It was constructed in a hurry, after a fire last year ravaged the previous facility — a sprawl of tents, at one point holding as many as 19,500 people, that was described as the most hellish place in Europe.
The replacement, by comparison, is not overcrowded. It houses several thousand people, but the conditions are uneven.
Some migrants live in tents, others in prefabicrated containers. Some migrants have heat, others do not. Residents said they watched camp officials working furiously to remove a month’s worth of garbage before the pope’s visit.
“So at least the pope got them that,” said Liza Papadimitriou, an advocacy manager for Doctors Without Borders. “Even if nothing else changes in the long term — hey, they cleaned it.”
From the podium where Francis spoke, one could see the full landscape of the camp: the grid of white containers, the police, the lapping Aegean Sea. Francis said a place like this shouldn’t be a “theater of conflict.”
“Let us stop this shipwreck of civilization,” he said.’
After the address, Francis exited, this time getting directly into his white Fiat, and soon the motorcades, the cameras, the crowds were gone.
No migrants had been whisked away for planes to Rome; this time, the Vatican is planning instead to relocate migrants from Cyprus.
“It’s good that someone is still thinking about refugees,” said Josue Makalalulendo, 18, an asylum-seeker from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“I’ve been here for a year, and this is the first time I saw cameras. I think the pope came to break through.”
Makalalulendo hoped that conditions might change as a result. But it was too early to tell.
His more immediate priority was managing the rest of Sunday, which he said was typically the hardest day of the week. On Sundays, migrants are barred from leaving the camp.
He walked back to his home, container No. 123, where he planned to spend the rest of the day.
“It’s depressing,” he said.