Leading by example: Pope brings 12 Syrian Muslim refugees back to Italy

Pope Francis gave Europe a concrete lesson Saturday in how to treat refugees by bringing 12 Syrian Muslims to Italy aboard his charter plane after an emotional visit to the hard-hit Greek island of Lesbos.

The Vatican said the three families, including six children, would be supported by the Holy See and cared for by Italy's Catholic Sant'Egidio Community. Sant'Egidio has worked out a program with the Italian government to grant deserving refugees humanitarian visas to live in Italy while their asylum applications are being processed.

The Vatican said Francis wanted to make a "gesture of welcome" at the end of his five-hour visit to Lesbos, where he implored Europe to respond to the migrant crisis on its shores "in a way that is worthy of our common humanity." The Greek island just a few miles from the Turkish coast has seen hundreds of thousands of desperate people land on its shores in the last year, fleeing war and poverty at home.

Francis visited Lesbos alongside the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians and the head of the Church of Greece to thank Greece for its welcome and highlight the plight of refugees as the European Union implements a controversial plan to deport them back to Turkey.

At a ceremony in the port of Lesbos to thank locals, Francis said he understood Europe's concern about the migrant influx. But he said migrants are first of all human beings "who have faces, names and individual stories" and deserve to have their most basic human rights respected.

"God will repay this generosity and that of other surrounding nations, who from the beginning have welcomed with great openness the large number of people forced to migrate," he said.

Many refugees fell to their knees and wept at Francis' feet as he and the two Orthodox leaders approached them at the Moria refugee detention center. Others chanted "Freedom! Freedom!" as they passed by.

Francis bent down as one young girl knelt at his feet sobbing uncontrollably. A woman told the pope that her husband was in Germany but that she was stuck with her two sons in Lesbos.

In his remarks to them, Francis said the refugees should know that they are not alone and shouldn't lose hope. He said he wanted to visit them to hear their stories and to bring the world's attention to their plight.

"We hope that the world will heed these scenes of tragic and indeed desperate need, and respond in a way worthy of our common humanity," he said. "May all our brothers and sisters on this continent, like the Good Samaritan, come to your aid in the spirit of fraternity, solidarity and respect for human dignity that has distinguished its long history."

Francis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and the archbishop of Athens, Ieronymos II, then signed a joint declaration calling on the international community to make the protection of human lives a priority and to extend temporary asylum to those in need.

The declaration also called on political leaders to use all means to ensure that everyone, particularly Christians, can remain in their homelands and enjoy the "fundamental right to live in peace and security."

"The world will be judged by the way it has treated you," Bartholomew told the refugees. "And we will all be accountable for the way we respond to the crisis and conflict in the regions that you come from."

Francis and the two Orthodox leaders, officially divided from Catholics over a 1,000-year schism, lunched with eight of the refugees to hear their stories of fleeing war, conflict and poverty and their hopes for a better life in Europe. They then went to the island's main port to pray together and toss a floral wreath into the sea in memory of those who didn't make the journey — hundreds of people this year alone.

Earlier Saturday, Francis met Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and thanked him for the "generosity" shown by the Greek people in welcoming foreigners despite their own economic troubles.

Tsipras said he was proud of Greece's response "at a time when some of our partners — even in the name of Christian Europe — were erecting walls and fences to prevent defenseless people from seeking a better life."

Hours before Francis arrived, the European border patrol agency Frontex intercepted a dinghy carrying 41 Syrians and Iraqis off the coast of Lesbos. The refugees were detained and brought to shore in the main port of Mytilene.

The son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, Francis has made the plight of refugees, the poor and downtrodden the focus of his ministry as pope, denouncing the "globalization of indifference" that the world shows the less fortunate.

The wreath-tossing ceremony is a gesture Francis first made when he visited the Italian island of Lampedusa in the summer of 2013, his first trip outside Rome as pope, after a dozen migrants died trying to reach the southern tip of Europe. He made a similar gesture more recently at the U.S.-Mexican border, laying a bouquet of flowers next to a large crucifix at the Ciudad Juarez border crossing in memory of migrants who died trying to reach the U.S.

"He is slightly provocative," said George Demacopoulos, chair of Orthodox Christian studies at the Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York. Citing Francis' Mexico border visit in February, in the heat of a U.S. presidential campaign where immigration took center stage, he added: "He is within his purview to do so, but that was a provocative move."

The March 18 deal between the EU and Turkey stipulates that anyone arriving clandestinely on Greek islands on or after March 20 will be returned to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece. For every Syrian sent back, the EU will take another Syrian directly from Turkey for resettlement in Europe. In return, Turkey was granted billions of euros to deal with the more than 2.7 million Syrian refugees living there and promised that its stalled accession talks with the EU would speed up.

Human rights groups have denounced the deal as an abdication of Europe's obligation to grant protection to asylum-seekers, reported The Christian Science Monitor. The fear is that the plan won't reduce the migrant flow but simply push into a black market. 

It will only have the reverse effect, creating the kind of  “balloon effect” seen in the drug wars in Latin America, where clamping down on one group or area has resulted in simply pushing it elsewhere.

“The more you repress the mobility of people in need of mobility, the more you push them into the underground,” says says François Crepeau, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants. “We’ve seen that in the war on drugs, and prohibition in the 1930s in America. Those wars are not won. You win them by taking over the market."...

It is a high-risk plan for Europe, and one for which there is no alternative. It was formed as Austria restricted the numbers of migrants who could enter the country, generating a domino effect across the Balkan route. Even though officials say arrivals to Greece from Turkey have gone down since March 20, many migrants continue to come – including this morning, as the deportations began.

Human rights group say Europe has abandoned its legacy protecting human rights, and plan to challenge in court the premise that Turkey is a “safe country” for asylum seekers. Major aid organizations quit their work in Moria. Amnesty International, on the eve of the deportations, called it “an historic blow to human rights.”

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Winfield reported from Rome and Becatoros from Athens.

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