Church leaders seek ways to end deaths in Mediterranean

THERE HAVE been concerted calls for measures to end tragedies in the Mediterranean following a week in which almost 1,000 refugees are feared to have drowned. Pope Francis made a “heartfelt appeal” to the inter­national community to take swift and decisive action to avoid more deaths at sea. As many as 950 migrants are thought to have drowned off the coast of Libya after their overcrowded fishing boat capsized, carrying hundreds of refugees locked below deck, in a chilling echo of the eighteenth-century slave trade.

Traffickers collided with a cargo ship that had come to rescue them, Italian prosecutors said. Two men suspected of human trafficking have been arrested.

The Pope told tens of thousands in St Peter’s Square last Sunday: “They are men and women like us, brothers seeking a better life, starving, persecuted, wounded, exploited, victims of war. “I make a heartfelt appeal to the international community to react decisively and quickly to see to it that such tragedies are not repeated.” Mgr Giancarlo Perego, director of the Migrantes Foundation of the Italian bishops’ conference, said the crisis needs to be tackled at the root cause. “Misery and war are the two main causes of these departures which have been joined lately by international terrorism. We need a Marshall Plan for Africa,” he said, adding that a humanitarian ­channel should be opened to bring migrants safely to Europe.

The latest tragedy showed the inadequacy of the current patrol system run by the EU border control agency Frontex, he argued. “The failure of the Triton mission has been demonstrated,” he said. “We need to put in place on the edges of the Mediterranean a social plan for the care of refugees, asylum seekers and others – for  reception and then integration.”

Cardinal Antonio Maria Vegliò, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants, faulted Europe’s response to the crisis. “In Italy we call it an emergency but how is it that in Europe, the richest region of the world, we cannot even put in place a welcome programme and patrols?” he asked.

The head of the Italian bishops’ conference, Nunzio Galantino, also condemned the inaction of the European Union. He said that European states were discussing military intervention as a way of avoiding humanitarian assistance. This was “an elegant way of washing their hands” of a problem that he said “is becoming ever more unbearable for Italy”.

In a human-trafficking conference at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences coincidentally over the same weekend as the tragedy, Francis told participants that ­people-smuggling was a “plague on the body of contemporary mankind”, which “constitutes a regression of humanity”.

Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, told the conference that it was “excruciating” to see that there is no shared responsibility in the EU on the issue of refugees arriving in Italy. She praised the efforts Italy was making.