Greece: Greece: migrants between doubt and hope after Pope Francis' visit to Lesbos
Pope Francis discussing with migrants during his visit to Camp Mavrouvoni on the island of Lesbos, December 5, 2021. AP - Alessandra Tarantino
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
On Sunday December 5, Pope Francis visited the island of Lesbos.
It was his second visit in five years to this island, a symbol of migratory flows to Europe.
A new so-called reception and identification center, Mavrouvoni, replaced the one in Moria, destroyed by fire at the end of 2020. Some 2,200 people currently live here and some asylum seekers have been affected by the speech of the sovereign pontiff.
Others, on the other hand, fear that only words remain.
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With our special correspondent in Lesbos,
Joël Bronner
With a baby bundled up in a woolen coat on her knees, Vicky Chalene, a Cameroonian, sits near a container in the Lesvos camp,
on the way where Pope Francis
greeted asylum seekers, near a hour ago.
“
I really liked his speech.
What struck me the most was that he said: the problem is not to raise walls, the problem is to look at what is problematic for us, what brings us here.
Look at the problem at the root.
Because we are fleeing rape, wars, famine, death…
”, she confides.
Migrant brothers and sisters, I am here in Lesbos to tell you that I am close to you.
To look at your eyes, full of fear and expectation, which have seen violence and poverty, eyes furrowed by too many tears.
#TravelApostolic
- Pope Francis (@Pontifex_fr) December 5, 2021
Others, like the Congolese Kamille Mobaki, doubt that the arrival of the Pope will change his situation.
He finds himself
stranded in Lesbos
, after two rejection of his asylum application, and almost two years spent on the island: “
I did not hear anything that would help me.
When this visit is over, what will happen?
We should be refugees but we don't have legal status.
According to the authorities, we do not meet the criteria to be refugees.
Yet that is what we are.
"
In Lesbos, the Pope did not mince his words on the
migration issue
, speaking in particular of a "
shipwreck of civilization
" to qualify the policies currently at work in Greece and in Europe.
But for now, beyond words, what would be especially important to this young Congolese, it would be that these policies know a real change.
But Europe does not seem to take the path.
Please stop this sinking of civilization!
https://t.co/CwEZmBkR7k
- Pope Francis (@Pontifex_fr) December 5, 2021
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Greece
International Migration
Pope Francis
Refugees