MYTILENE – From the island of Lesbos on the final day of his east Mediterranean visit, Pope Francis spoke out on the migration crisis and denounced Europe’s “walls proposed as a solution,” Vatican sources said.

  “We are in the age of walls and barbed wires,” said the pontiff after meeting migrants in refugee camps on the island. 

 “Of course, we understand fears and insecurities, difficulties and dangers.” However, he said, “it is sad to hear, as solutions, the use of mutual funds to build walls, to build barbed wire fences.”

 This is Pope Francis’ second visit to the island and its refugee camps, having first been in 2016. He said that since that trip unfortunately “little has changed.”

 “In Europe there are those who persist in treating the problem as business that does not concern them. This is tragic. The root causes must be addressed, not the poor people who pay the consequences, even being used for political propaganda.”

 On Lesbos, Francis listened to the testimonies of refugees and volunteers and stressed that "migration is not a problem in the Middle East and North Africa, in Europe and in Greece. It is a problem of the world, a humanitarian crisis that affects everyone.”

 “The pandemic has affected us globally” and made us “understand that the big issues must be tackled together.”

 “In today's world, fragmented solutions are inadequate. Closures and nationalism, history teaches us, lead to disastrous consequences,” the pope warned.

 “It is an illusion to think that it is enough to safeguard oneself, defending oneself from the weakest who knock on the door. The future will put us even more in contact with each other.”

 “To turn it to the good we do not need unilateral actions, but far-reaching policies. History, I repeat, teaches it, but we have not yet learned it. Do not turn your backs on reality.”

 “It is easy to drag public opinion by instilling fear of the other. Why, on the other hand, with the same attitude, do we not speak of the exploitation of the poor, of the forgotten and often lavishly financed wars, of the economic agreements made on the skin of the people, of the hidden maneuvers to smuggle arms and make their trade proliferate?”

 “The root causes must be addressed, not the poor people who pay the consequences, even being used for political propaganda.”

 “The Mediterranean, which for millennia has united different peoples and distant lands, is becoming a cold cemetery without tombstones. This large basin of water, the cradle of many civilizations, now looks like a mirror of death.”

 “Brothers and sisters, please, let us stop this sinking of civilization.”

ln