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(Vatican Radio) A senior official of Caritas Internationalis said the Pope’s 6-hour visit to the Greek island of Lesbos on Saturday brought to the fore the urgency of tackling the refugee crisis which is a huge moral issue for both the European Union and the world.  Patrick Nicholson, Head of Communications at Caritas Internationalis, said the papal trip and its message also underlined that we can no longer treat people like commodities to be traded between countries. Nicholson who was in Lesbos during the Pope’s visit spoke to Susy Hodges.

Listen to the interview with Patrick Nicholson of Caritas Internationalis:  

“Shames us all”

Nicholson said the papal trip shone the spotlight on the refugee crisis and underlined that the international community really needs to address this issue.  He said Pope Francis’ trip to Lesbos shone the spotlight on some of the more troubling aspects of the recent deal between the EU and Turkey that calls for the deportations of refugees and migrants if their asylum claim is refused. In return for every Syrian deported back to Turkey, the EU will take in a Syrian living in a refugee camp inside Turkey. Nicholson said the papal trip “brought to the fore that we can no longer treat people like commodities to be traded between countries.”…. I think it shames us all, the way we treat ordinary people, men, women and children.”

Asked about the Pope’s decision to take back with him 12 Syrian refugees, Nicholson praised this gesture, describing it as “an extraordinary symbol” that he hopes will serve as a role model or message for other European countries that “they really have to do more to take (in) these people who are fleeing war, poverty and the worst abuses imaginable.” 

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Vatican City, Apr 15, 2016 / 01:51 pm (CNA).- *Updated April 16, 2016 at 8 am EST with information on Bernie Sanders' meeting with Pope Francis Saturday morning.

Attending an event hosted by a Vatican academy, U.S. presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (D-Vt.) provided a long reflection on Catholic social teaching, as he saw it.

Sanders spoke Friday at a conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s “Centesimus Annus.” The senator commented:

“With the fall of Communism, Pope John Paul II gave a clarion call for human freedom in its truest sense: freedom that defends the dignity of every person and that is always oriented towards the common good.”

The April 15-16 conference was sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which fosters dialogue between scientists, politicians and various experts.

At the start of the gathering, Archbishop Sanchez Sorondo, the academy’s chancellor, read a letter from the Pope. The letter said he could not make the event. Pope Francis said that his agenda was “quite complicated” because of his Saturday trip to visit migrants and refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Pope Francis’ letter to the gathering did not mention Sen. Sanders or any of the other participants.

Sanders did, however, meet breifly with Pope Francis in the Vatican at 6 a.m. Saturday morning before the Pope's departure for Greece. He praised the pontiff for his courageous efforts in the areas of climate change and the moral economy.

John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical marked the anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum,” a major landmark in Catholic social teaching.

“There are few places in modern thought that rival the depth and insight of the Church’s moral teachings on the market economy,” Sanders said in remarks to the conference. He cited Leo XIII’s encyclical that described the challenges of “the enormous wealth of a few opposed to the poverty of the many.”

 “At a time when so few have so much, and so many have so little, we must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable,” Sanders commented.

“We are now twenty-five years after the fall of Communist rule in Eastern Europe. Yet we have to acknowledge that Pope John Paul’s warnings about the excesses of untrammeled finance were deeply prescient.”

The senator cited problems with financial speculation, illegal flow of money, environmental destruction, globalization, financial deregulation, corporate power in politics and weakening rights of workers. He said that “widespread financial criminality on Wall Street” helped cause “the world’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

Sen. Sanders said that economic consequences for working families have been dire.

He repeatedly cited Pope Francis. “Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules,” he said, citing the Pope’s words against the world’s “new idols.”

“The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal,” the Pope had said.

The senator also cited the Pope’s criticism of ideologies that “uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation,” because this denies States the right to control them for the common good.

Sen. Sanders echoed the Pope’s rejection of “a financial system that rules rather than serves.”

In the face of financial corruption, Sanders said, Pope Francis is an example “against such a surrender to despair and cynicism.”

“He has opened the eyes of the world once again to the claims of mercy, justice and the possibilities of a better world. He is inspiring the world to find a new global consensus for our common home.”

The senator also drew on Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si.”

“The challenges facing our planet are not mainly technological or even financial, because as a world we are rich enough to increase our investments in skills, infrastructure, and technological know-how to meet our needs and to protect the planet,” he said. “Our challenge is mostly a moral one, to redirect our efforts and vision to the common good.”

Sen. Sanders, who is Jewish, is currently battling for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The New York primary election, a major event in the campaign cycle, will take place April 19.

While Sanders applauded parts of Church teaching, some of his beliefs are strongly at odds with Catholic belief.

In his April 14 debate with Clinton, Sanders said he has a “100 percent pro-choice voting record.” He called for increased federal funding for the politically powerful abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

Sanders has also sided with LGBT political causes over religious liberty concerns, vowing to veto “any legislation that purports to ‘protect’ religious liberty at the expense of other’s rights.”

 

(This article was updated at 2:07 p.m. local time in Rome to reflect Bernie Sanders' meeting with Pope Francis Saturday morning.)

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Vatican City, Apr 16, 2016 / 06:30 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After traveling to the Greek island of Lesbos, a primary entry point for refugees seeking passage into Europe, Pope Francis decided to bring 12 of them on his plane back to the Vatican as an act of welcome and solidarity.

“The Pope has desired to make a gesture of welcome regarding refugees, accompanying on his plane to Rome three families of refugees,” an April 16 communique from the Vatican read.

Coming from Syria, all of the families are Muslim and number 12 people in total, including six children. Two of the families are from Damascus, and one is from Deir Azzor, which is now territory occupied ISIS. Their homes had been bombed.

According to the AFP news agency, an official of Greece's state refugee coordination agency said the families were all staying in the open camp of Kara Tepe on Lesbos, and were selected through a drawing.

The initiative was brought to fruition through negotiations between the Vatican Secretariat of State and the competent Greek and Italian authorities.

It was announced as Pope Francis prepared to leave Greek island of Lesbos, where he traveled April 16 for a daytrip along with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I; His Beatitude Ieronymos, Archbishop of Athens and all Greece, and Archbishop Fragkiskos Papamanolis, OFM Cap, President of the Greek Bishops Conference as a sign of concern and solidarity for migrants forced to flee their homelands due to war, violence, hunger and poverty.

Lesbos, along with its neighboring island Kos, has been one of the primary destinations for refugees, many of whom are fleeing war in Syrian and Afghanistan, who travel to Turkey in order to make the perilous voyage across the Mediterranean to enter Europe.  

In 2015 alone more than 1.1 million migrants fleeing war and violence poured into Europe, and the influx has continued, perplexing E.U. leaders as to how to handle the crisis.

Francis’ visit to Lesbos falls barely one month after the E.U. struck a new deal with Turkey stipulating that all migrants and refugees who cross into Greece illegally by sea will be sent back to Turkey once they have been registered and their asylum claims processed.

In return, the E.U. agreed to take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey, giving the country early visa-free travel and advancing talks regarding their E.U. membership negotiations.

According to the Vatican communique, all of the people the Pope took with him “were already in camps in Lesbos before the agreement between the European Union and Turkey.”

The Vatican will take responsibility for both bringing in and maintaining the three families, though the initial hospitality will be provided by the Community of Sant’Egidio.

The Community of Sant’Egido told CNA about the refugees and their situation.

One married couple, Hasan and Nour, have a two-year-old son. They are engineers from the Damascus suburb of Al Zabadani. Continuous bombardment made it very risky to live there. They fled to Turkey, where they took a boat to Lesbos.

Ramy and Suhila and their three children are from Deir ez-Zor, an eastern Syrian city conquered by the Islamic State group. They are both in their fifties. He is a teacher, while she is a dressmaker. Their home was destroyed. They arrived in Greece from Turkey in February 2016.

Osama and Wafa are from the part of Damascus called Zamalka. They have two children.

Their house was bombed. Wafa said that their youngest child wakes up every night. For a time the child had stopped talking.

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Vatican City, Apr 16, 2016 / 08:32 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis had simple message for the thousands of refugees now staying on the Greek island of Lesbos: you are not forgotten.

“I have wanted to be with you today. I want to tell you that you are not alone,” Pope Francis told some 3,000 refugees during his April 16 visit.
 
“In these weeks and months, you have endured much suffering in your search for a better life,” he said. He explained that he and the other religious leaders present came not just “to be with you and to hear your stories,” but also to “call the attention of the world to this grave humanitarian crisis and to plead for its resolution.”

Pope Francis praised the Greek people for the help they have given in spite of their own economic difficulties. At the same time, he said, “so much more needs to be done.”

He said “this is the message I want to leave with you today: do not lose hope!” He added that love is “the greatest gift we can offer one another.”

He pointed to the parable of the Good Samaritan. He prayed that everyone in Europe would imitate the Samaritan and “come to your aid in the spirit of fraternity, solidarity and respect for human dignity that has distinguished its long history.”

Pope Francis spoke to the thousands of migrants currently staying in the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos. The camp was his first stop on his brief trip to the small Greek island.

His trip was intended as a sign of concern and solidarity for migrants forced to flee their homelands due to war, violence, hunger and poverty.

Lesbos, along with its neighboring island Kos, has been one of the primary destinations for refugees. Many of them are fleeing war in Syrian and Afghanistan. They have sought to make the sometimes perilous voyage across the Mediterranean to enter Europe.  

In 2015 alone more than 1.1 million migrants fleeing war and violence poured into Europe. The influx has continued, leaving E.U. leaders perplexed at to how to handle the crisis.

Pope Francis’ visit to Lesbos falls barely one month after the E.U. struck a new deal with Turkey stipulating that all migrants and refugees who cross into Greece illegally by sea will be sent back to Turkey once they have been registered and their asylum claims processed.

In return, the E.U. agreed to take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey. They gave Turkish citizens visa-free travel early and advanced talks on their E.U. membership negotiations.

But thousands of refugees that have landed on Lesbos have been stuck on the island with no clear resolution in sight.

When Pope Francis arrived at the airport of Lesbos in Mytilene, he was welcomed by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras; the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I; His Beatitude Ieronymos, Archbishop of Athens and all Greece and Archbishop Fragkiskos Papamanolis, OFM Cap, President of the Greek Bishops Conference.

He then held a private, brief meeting with Tsipras at the airport. According to an April 16 communique from the Vatican, the discussion focused on the current refugee and migration crisis, with particular attention to the situation on Lesbos.

The Pope then boarded a minibus with Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Ieronymos destined for the Moria refugee camp.

In his speech at the camp, Archbishop Ieronymos said the Pope’s presence in Greece is “pivotal,” since “together we bring forward before the whole world, Christian and beyond, the current tragedy of the refugee crisis.”

“Today we unite our voices in condemning their uprooting, to decry any form of degradation of the human person,” the Greek Orthodox archbishop said. He called on U.N. agencies “to finally, using the great experience that they offer, address this tragic situation that we are living.”

“I hope that we never see children washing up on the shores of the Aegean. I hope to soon see them there, untroubled, enjoying life.”

Patriarch Bartholomew also spoke, telling the refugees directly that as ecumenical leaders they have come “to look into your eyes, to hear your voices, and to hold your hands.”

“We have traveled here to tell you that we care. We have traveled here because the world has not forgotten you,” he said, explaining that migration is a global issue.

He said the world “will be judged by the way it has treated you. And we will all be accountable for the way we respond to the crisis and conflict in the regions that you come from.”

Bartholomew pointed specifically to the plight of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East who face violent persecution and ethnic cleansing. He assured the migrants that “we shall never forget you. We shall never stop speaking for you. And we assure you that we will do everything to open the eyes and hearts of the world.”

After speaking to the refugees, the leaders signed a joint declaration on the migration issue and ate lunch with some of the refugees in a container just behind the podium.

Following their lunch, the small delegation boarded the minibus again and made their way to a port. There they met with Greek citizens and members of the Catholic community of Greece. They held a memorial for the thousands victims of migration, many of whom have perished in the waters of the Mediterranean.

Speaking to the crowd gathered there, Pope Francis said he has wanted to visit the island “ever since migrants arrived here seeking peace and dignity.”

He acknowledged the worries expressed by numerous people and institutions, both in Greece and in other European countries, and said these concerns are “understandable and legitimate.”

However, the Pope also noted that despite the various concerns, migrants are not simply “a statistic” but are “first of all persons who have faces, names and individual stories.”

“Europe is the homeland of human rights, and whoever sets foot on European soil ought to sense this, and thus become more aware of the duty to respect and defend those rights,” he said.

The Pope stressed that in order to be truly united to those forced to leave their homelands, the causes of this “dramatic situation” must be eliminated first.

“It is not enough to limit ourselves to responding to emergencies as they arise,” he said. “Instead, we need to encourage political efforts that are broader in scope and multilateral.”

Above all peace must be built where there is war and destruction, the Pope said. The first step in this process is to make resolute efforts “to counter the arms trade and arms trafficking, and the often hidden machinations associated with them.”

“Those who carry out acts of hatred and violence must be denied all means of support,” the Pope said, and encouraged increased cooperation between international organizations and humanitarian agencies.

Pope Francis stressed to the migrants that “God is neither indifferent to, nor distant from, the tragedies that wound humanity.”

Not only does he come to our aid, but through Jesus he shows us the way to peace, he told the Greek community. Only those who imitate Jesus in service are capable of building peace.

He concluded his speech by hailing the Greek people as “guardians of humanity” for the care they have shown to migrants.

“You care with tenderness for the body of Christ, who suffers in the least of his brothers and sisters, the hungry and the stranger, whom you have welcomed,” he said.

After the Pope’s speech each of the three religious leaders recited a brief prayer for the victims of migration and led faithful in a minute of silence. Three children then gave each of them a laurel wreath.

All three together threw the wreaths into the sea, where thousands of migrants have lost their lives.

Pope Francis returned to the airport with the religious leaders. He met privately with each of them and again met with the Greek Prime Minister. He then boarded the plane back to Rome, arriving at 4:30 p.m. local time.

The Pope took 12 Syrian refugees back to Italy, including six children.

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Cindy Wooden

MYTILENE, Greece (CNS) -- Although their speeches were punctuated with policy appeals, Pope Francis and Orthodox leaders focused their visit to the island of Lesbos on the faces, stories and drawings of refugees.

Pope Francis, Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and all Greece spent more time April 16 greeting the refugees individually than they did giving speeches.

The children received a pat on the head and the men a handshake. In respect for the Muslim faith of most of the women, the leaders put their hands over their hearts and bowed in greeting them. The gratitude of those men, women and children was clear in their smiles, tears and sobbing pleas for help.

An Iraqi woman asked for the assistance of the pope and patriarch in finding medical care for her daughter with bone cancer. Another woman kept saying, in English, "We are very tired here." A man told the pope that he had a brother and sister in Canada and was trying to join them. Another man pleaded with Pope Francis, "Please, father, bless me. Father, please, bless me."

Pope Francis went to Lesbos expecting those stories. On the flight from Rome, he told reporters, "This is a trip marked by sadness and that's important. It's a sad trip. We are going to meet so many people who suffer, who don't know where to go, who were forced to flee, and we are also going to a cemetery -- the sea, where so many have drowned."

"We are going to encounter the greatest human catastrophe since World War II," he said.

The pope asked reporters to make a special effort to share with their readers and listeners "what is in my heart."

After briefly greeting each other at Lesbos' Mytilene airport, the pope and Orthodox leaders rode together in a minibus to the Moria refugee camp, a facility that a year ago was an open center when migrants and refugees could file requests for asylum.

Today it is a locked facility surrounded by walls topped with razor wire where some 2,500 newcomers wait out the slow process of discovering whether their asylum requests will be accepted or they will be put on a ferry and taken back to Turkey. Most of the refugees are from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and set sail for Greece in inflatable boats from the nearby Turkish coast.

Archbishop Ieronymos, speaking at the refugee camp, said he hoped to never again "see children washing up on the shores of the Aegean."

The Orthodox archbishop spoke with pride of the Greek people who have opened their hearts and even their homes to the refugees, despite years of serious economic trouble and a government almost crippled by austerity measures.

But Archbishop Ieronymos was not so appreciative of the European Union and the international community, which continue to pledge help in dealing with the massive influx of refugees, but also have closed more and more of their borders.

"Only those who see the eyes of those small children that we met at the refugee camps will be able to immediately recognize in its entirety the 'bankruptcy' of humanity and solidarity that Europe has shown these last few years," he said.

For Patriarch Bartholomew, the visit to the camp was summarized as solidarity in tears.

"We have wept as we watched the Mediterranean Sea becoming a burial ground for your loved ones," he told the refugees. "We have wept as we witnessed the sympathy and sensitivity of the people of Lesbos and other islands. But we have also wept as we saw the hard-heartedness of our fellow brothers and sisters -- your fellow brothers and sisters -- close borders and turn away."

"The world will be judged by the way it has treated you," said the patriarch, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians.

Pope Francis told those interned at the camp that he wanted to join the patriarch and archbishop on Lesbos first of all "simply to be with you and to hear your stories."

However, he also said they wanted to call the world's attention to the refugee crisis in the hopes "that the world will heed these scenes of tragic and indeed desperate need, and respond in a way worthy of our common humanity."

God created all people to be brothers and sisters, the pope said. But it is so easy for many people "to ignore other people's suffering and even to exploit their vulnerability."

The pope urged the refugees, "Do not lose hope!"

"The greatest gift we can offer one another is love," Pope Francis told the refugees. He asked them, even in the camp, to express that love with "a merciful look, a readiness to listen and understand, a word of encouragement, a prayer."

He told the refugees, most of whom are Muslim, "We Christians love to tell the story of the good Samaritan, a foreigner who saw a man in need and immediately stopped to help. For us, it is a story about God's mercy, which is meant for everyone, for God is the all-merciful," he said, using a familiar Muslim description of God.

Pope Francis, Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Ieronymos signed a joint declaration at the refugee camp insisting the world "cannot ignore the colossal humanitarian crisis created by the spread of violence and armed conflict, the persecution and displacement of religious and ethnic minorities and the uprooting of families from their homes."

The three leaders insisted that dignified care must be given to those who felt forced to flee their homelands, but they also pleaded with world leaders to get serious about addressing the wars, human rights violations and extreme poverty that cause millions to leave their homelands each year.

The churches' concern for refugees, they said in the declaration, is not a political position but part of fulfilling the Christian mission of service to the world.

"We urge the international community to make the protection of human lives a priority and, at every level, to support inclusive policies which extend to all religious communities," they said.

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Follow Wooden on Twitter @Cindy_Wooden.

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Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Cindy Wooden

MYTILENE, Greece (CNS) -- Pope Francis' five-hour visit to Greece ended with him offering safe passage to Italy to 12 Syrian Muslims, half under the age of 18.

The Vatican had kept secret the pope's plan to invite the members of three Syrian families to fly back to Rome with him April 16. Rumors began swirling in the Greek media a couple hours before the flight took off, but it was confirmed by the Vatican only as the 12 were boarding the papal plane.

The Vatican Secretariat of State made formal arrangements with the Italy and the Greek governments to obtain the legal permits needed for the refugees to live in Italy, a Vatican statement said. The Vatican will assume financial responsibility for the families, who will be assisted by the Rome-based Community of Sant'Egidio.

All 12 in the group, the Vatican added, had arrived in Greece prior to March 20, the date a European Union agreement with Turkey went into effect for returning most asylum seekers to Turkey. The children are between the ages of 2 and 17.

After spending the morning with desperate refugees interned in a camp in Greece, Pope Francis and Orthodox leaders turned their attention and prayers to the sea, the final burial place of hundreds who died trying to get to Europe.

Just since January, the International Organization for Migration said, more than 150,000 migrants and refugees arrived in Greece and 366 people died attempting crossing the Aegean Sea to the country.

"Though many of their graves bear no name, to you each one is know, loved and cherished," Pope Francis prayed to God April 16 in Mytilene, a city on Lesbos, the island on which more than half the refugees have landed.

"Wake us from the slumber of indifference," the pope prayed, "open our eyes to their suffering and free us from the insensitivity born of world comfort and self-centeredness."

In his prayer, Pope Francis insisted "we are all migrants, journeying in hope" toward God in heaven.

Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and all Greece stood alongside Pope Francis on the waterfront at the Mytilene harbor on the bright spring day. They, too, offered prayers for those who have died making the crossing and joined the pope in blessing laurel wreaths that were tossed into the sea.

Recognizing the generosity and sacrifice of the Greek government and Greek people, who had tried to assist hundreds of thousands of refugees despite an ongoing economic crisis, the pope told them, "You are guardians of humanity for you care with tenderness for the body of Christ, who suffers in the least of his brothers and sisters, the hungry and the stranger, whom you have welcomed."

With hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence in Syria and Iraq and fleeing extreme poverty and persecution elsewhere, Pope Francis acknowledged that Europeans and their governments naturally could feel overwhelmed. The fact that the newcomers speak different languages and have different religions and cultures adds to the challenge.

But the migrants "are living in trying conditions, in an atmosphere of anxiety and fear, at times even of despair, due to material hardship and uncertainty for the future," the pope said.

While the concerns of governments are "understandable and legitimate," he said, one must never forget that "migrants, rather than simply being a statistic, are first of all persons who have faces, names and individual stories."

Greece, and to a lesser extent Italy, are on the frontlines of the refugee influx and are forced to bear much of the burden for welcoming, housing and screening them as other European countries close their borders or make entry difficult.

Pope Francis, though, called on Europe to live up to its claim of being "the homeland of human rights."

"Whoever sets foot on European soil ought to sense this, and thus become more aware of the duty to respect and defend those rights," the pope said.

He praised the people of Lesbos for showing that "in these lands, the cradle of civilization, the heart of humanity continues to beat; a humanity that before all else recognizes others as brothers and sisters, a humanity that wants to build bridges and recoils from the idea of putting up walls to make us feel safer. In reality, barriers create divisions instead of promoting the true progress of peoples, and divisions sooner or later lead to confrontations."

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Follow Wooden on Twitter @Cindy_Wooden.

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Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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