Arrived Saturday, December 4 in Greece for a two-day visit, the 84-year-old Argentine pontiff regretted that "Europe persists in procrastinating" in the face of the arrivals of migrants "instead of being a motor of solidarity".   

Pope Francis was speaking before the President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou and the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as well as an audience of Catholic and civil society figures who warmly applauded him at the Presidential Palace in Athens.  

If Pope Francis visited the Greek island of Lesbos in 2016, where he will return on Sunday, it is the first visit of a pope to Athens in twenty years, since the visit of John Paul II in May 2001.   

He had previously spent two days in Cyprus where he strongly lambasted "the wall of hatred" erected against migrants, fifty of whom will be transferred to Rome, according to Nicosia.   

In Athens, the pope pontiff recalled that Greece had "received on some of its islands a number of migrant brothers and sisters greater than that of the inhabitants themselves".  

However, "the European community, torn apart by nationalist egoisms, sometimes appears blocked and uncoordinated, instead of being a motor of solidarity", he told the political authorities.  

The danger of "authoritarianism"     

François also noted "a decline in democracy, and not only on the European continent", believing that "democracy requires the participation and involvement of everyone", when "authoritarianism is hasty and the easy assurances offered by populisms seem tempting ". 

A few minutes earlier, President Sakellaropoulou had mentioned the "humanity of the Greeks and the disproportionate burden they have borne" in the management of this crisis. 

"Our country is trying as much as possible to prevent illegal trafficking in people," she said. 

The president also thanked the Pope for his "warm support" during the conversion of the former Hagia Sophia in Istanbul into a mosque, in order to "preserve it as a universal symbol of religious worship and an emblematic monument of the world heritage ". 

 The Pope said he came to Athens "to quench his thirst at the sources of fraternity" and to strengthen his links with his "brothers of faith", the Orthodox Christians, separated from the Catholic Church since the schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople.  

Francis will meet on Saturday with the Archbishop of the Orthodox Church of Greece Hieronym II and his entourage. 

In a video published shortly before his departure from Rome, the Pope presented himself as a "pilgrim" to meet "all, not just Catholics", a minority of 1.2% in a country with a large religious majority Orthodox, not separated from the state.   

Visit to Lesbos    

This trip - his 35th abroad since his election in 2013 - will also be marked on Sunday by a new lightning visit to Lesbos, emblematic of the migration crisis, where he said he would go "to the sources of humanity" to plead for the reception and "integration" of refugees. 

Forty migrant defense NGOs urged the Pope to intervene to put an end to the alleged refoulements of exiles at the Greek-Turkish borders.

The "spiritual father" is eagerly awaited in Lesbos, where around 30 new asylum seekers landed on Wednesday.  

"We are waiting for him with open arms," ​​said Berthe, a Cameroonian who expects the Pope "to pray for us because of the insecurities we have experienced".  

During his "brief" visit to Mavrovouni camp, he will meet two refugee families "chosen at random", according to Dimitris Vafeas, deputy director of the camp.   

Some 900 police officers were to be deployed during his trip to the Greek island and around the hastily erected camp after the September 2020 fire that destroyed the structure of Moria, which the Pope had visited five years ago. . 

Drones, armored vehicles, cut roads: the capital is also placed under high security until the departure of the sovereign pontiff late Monday morning, in anticipation of possible manifestations of hostility.  

Even if the climate is better than in 2001, during the first visit of a pope to Greece, there are, inside the Greek synod, "some famous anti-Catholic fanatics", Pierre Salembier told AFP , superior of the Jesuit community in Greece.  

All gatherings were banned in the center of Athens, overflown by a helicopter.

Up to 2,000 police officers are expected in the event of protests by orthodox fundamentalists.  

Twenty years ago, John Paul II asked for "forgiveness" for the sins of Catholics against the Orthodox, in reference to the sack of Constantinople in 1204.   

With AFP 

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