Church appeals for solidarity with refugees

German church leaders have condemned a wave of attacks on an asylum centre near Dresden, during which refugee buses were diverted to escape more than 1,000 rampaging youths.

“Such behaviour is a disgrace to Europe,” said Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin. “The fact that stones and incendiary devices have been thrown, and these refugees could only reach accommodation via lengthy detours at night, suggests we only gain humanity after midnight.”

The 61-year-old archbishop was reacting to three days of riots outside the centre, a converted hardware store, at Heidenau, which left 30 police injured. The president of Germany’s Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, condemned the violence and called on Catholic parishes and religious houses to do more to accommodate refugees in his native Bavaria, which is set to receive 120,000 this year.

“The assistance provided by government agencies, and by non-statutory institutions like Caritas, is repeatedly reaching its limits. Efforts are needed by the whole of society,” said Marx in a pastoral letter on Monday.

The violence erupted amid a growing crisis over the mass arrival of refugees and asylum-seekers from the Middle East, Asia and North Africa, currently centred on Greece, Italy and Macedonia. At the weekend, another German church leader criticised proposals to reduce cash benefits, as a means of reducing incentives for asylum-seeking, and also condemned calls in some countries for the admission of only non-Muslim refugees.

During a visit to Kosovo, Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne told Germany’s Catholic news agency KNA: “The human right to asylum is indivisible.”