ATHENS – Pope Francis has expressed a wish to visit refugees in Greece, the Greek Orthodox Church said Tuesday.
The papal trip would likely pile pressure on EU leaders, which aims to defuse Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War II by curbing the influx of people.
The Greek Orthodox Church said it had approved plans for a papal visit to Lesbos island after the pope expressed a desire to “draw the attention of the international community to the need for an immediate ceasefire in the conflicts” in the Middle East.
The pontiff also wished to “shed light on the major humanitarian problem” of the migrant influx, the statement said, adding that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, had been invited on the same day.
The statement did not give a date for the trip but the religious news website Dogma said it could be April 15.
The pope has previously spoken out on the migrant crisis, using his recent Easter address to criticise the “rejection” of refugees.
More than a million people arrived in Europe in 2015, many of them from war-ravaged Syria.
Source: AFP, April 5
