‘Welcome refugees or face barbarism,’ says cardinal

Europe is closing its eyes to the magnitude and causes of the worldwide migration movements, Cardinal Francesco Montenegro, Archbishop of Agrigento, has warned. The Italian island of Lampedusa lies in his diocese, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

Lampedusa is a first landing place for many refugees fleeing the Libyan coast by boat, and because of the numbers who drowned, Pope Francis visited the island in the summer of 2013.

At a two-day symposium on “Religion and Migration” at the University of Vienna, Cardinal Montenegro said Europe was witnessing a “new chapter in history”. After exploiting Africa for its raw materials for centuries, he said, it now bore the responsibility for its development. In most European countries, people were still thinking of their own well-being before the common good. “If we continue with this egotism, we will endanger our own future,” he told news agency Kathpress.

In Lampedusa, time was [now] measured in the number of dead, he said. “The Mediterranean has become a grave. If we don’t manage to live together with refugees, the end will be barbarism.”