{"id":24395,"date":"2016-04-06T01:25:57","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T01:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/pope-plans-visit-to-refugees-on-greek-s-lesbos\/"},"modified":"2016-04-06T01:25:49","modified_gmt":"2016-04-06T01:25:49","slug":"pope-plans-visit-to-refugees-on-greek-s-lesbos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/pope-plans-visit-to-refugees-on-greek-s-lesbos\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope plans visit to refugees on Greek’s Lesbos island"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Greek church has accepted proposal for an informal symbolic meeting.}<\/p>\n

Pope Francis has asked to visit Greece to show support for refugees there, and Greek church authorities have approved plans for a papal trip to Lesbos, officials said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The Greek Orthodox church added that it had invited Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, \u201cso that he can honour Lesbos with his presence the day of Pope Francis\u2019s visit\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Vatican did not confirm that the pope would be visiting the Greek island but spokesman Federico Lombardi did not deny that contact had been made on the possibility.<\/p>\n

A Greek church statement, published on the specialist website Dogma.gr, gave no dates for the visits, but the site itself gave it as April 15.<\/p>\n

Head of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Ieronymos II, has been informed \u201cof the wish of Pope Francis to visit Greece,\u201d to \u201cdraw the attention of the international community to the need for an immediate ceasefire in the conflicts\u201d in the Middle East and to \u201cshed light on the major humanitarian problem\u201d of the influx of migrants to Lesbos and other Greek islands, the statement said.<\/p>\n

The Greek church has accepted the Pope\u2019s proposal for an informal \u201csymbolic and humanitarian\u201d visit to an Aegean Sea island for a few hours, it added.<\/p>\n

The Greek Orthodox Church chose to invite the pontiff to Lesbos which, since 2015, has been the main port of arrival into Europe, from Turkey, for those fleeing war or poverty in their own countries many of whom are Syrian.<\/p>\n

SEND WAKE-UP CALL<\/p>\n

\u201cThe personality and prestige of the ecumenical patriarch (Bartholomew)\u201d who is based in Istanbul \u201cand the weight of the presence of the Pope will send a resounding wake-up call to the international community,\u201d the Greek church said in its statement.<\/p>\n

The news of the Pope\u2019s interest came the day after Greece began expelling migrants back to Turkey under a deal agreed between the EU and Ankara aimed at quelling the bloc\u2019s worst migration crisis since World War II. Pope Francis has on several occasions spoken up for the migrants flooding into Europe.<\/p>\n

On March 27 he spoke out against the \u201crejection\u201d of refugees as Europe struggles to cope with the influx which brought over a million migrants to its shore last year.<\/p>\n

Countries along Europe\u2019s \u201cBalkan route\u201d have toughened their stance on migrants in recent weeks, closing their borders to those seeking to transit in search of a better life in the continent\u2019s wealthier northern states.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Easter message of the risen Christ… invites us not to forget those men and women seeking a better future, an ever more numerous throng of migrants and refugees… fleeing from war, hunger, poverty and social injustice,\u201d the pope said then.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis in 2013 visited the Italian island of Lampedusa, where large numbers of migrants fleeing fighting in Libya were arriving.<\/p>\n

After the EU beefed up controls along this sea route, the Aegean islands became the favoured destinations for people smugglers.<\/p>\n

\"Pope<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Greek church has accepted proposal for an informal symbolic meeting.} Pope Francis has asked to visit Greece to show support for refugees there, and Greek church authorities have approved plans for a papal trip to Lesbos, officials said on Tuesday. The Greek Orthodox church added that it had invited Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the head of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[101],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-internationl","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24395"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24395"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}