{"id":24651,"date":"2016-04-16T04:13:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T04:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/refugee-crisis-pope-francis-arrives-in-lesbos\/"},"modified":"2016-04-16T04:13:45","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T04:13:45","slug":"refugee-crisis-pope-francis-arrives-in-lesbos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/refugee-crisis-pope-francis-arrives-in-lesbos\/","title":{"rendered":"Refugee crisis: Pope Francis arrives in Lesbos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Pope arrives for five-hour visit of the Greek island where he will meet refugees.}<\/p>\n<p>Pope Francis has arrived in Lesbos, the Greek island on the frontline of Europe&#8217;s refugee crisis for people striving to reach Western Europe on boats from Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>Francis, who took off from Rome&#8217;s Fiumicino airport at 05:20GMT, arrived on the island at around 7:00GMT for a visit expected to last five hours.<\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants have arrived in Lesbos in recent months on flimsy boats. Hundreds others have died on the way.<\/p>\n<p>In a move bound to turn the spotlight on Europe&#8217;s controversial deal with Turkey to end the unprecedented refugee crisis, the pontiff will visit a processing centre.<\/p>\n<p>The EU-Turkey deal as well as the processing centre have been slammed by rights groups, who claim refugees in Lesbos have been treated in a way that breaches basic human rights.<\/p>\n<p>His stay will also include lunch with a handful of refugees in one of the adapted containers used to accommodate them, hearing their stories of fleeing war, conflict and poverty and their hopes for a better life in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Hours before Francis arrived, the European border patrol agency Frontex intercepted a dinghy carrying 41 Syrians and Iraqis off the coast of Lesbos.<\/p>\n<p>The refugees were detained and brought to shore in the main port of Mytilene.<\/p>\n<p>Also ahead of the visit, municipal crews scrubbed the walls of the capital and port after graffiti reading &#8220;Papa Don&#8217;t Preach&#8221; was sprayed in black at several points on the seafront in Mytilene.<\/p>\n<p>The Vatican insists Saturday&#8217;s visit is purely humanitarian and religious in nature, not political or a &#8220;direct&#8221; criticism of the EU plan.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-11724 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/dfb1d4377a5e429faec64afa6b9e11bc_18.jpg\" alt=\"The EU-Turkey deal has faced heavy criticism in the wake of the refugee crisis\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Pope arrives for five-hour visit of the Greek island where he will meet refugees.} Pope Francis has arrived in Lesbos, the Greek island on the frontline of Europe&#8217;s refugee crisis for people striving to reach Western Europe on boats from Turkey. Francis, who took off from Rome&#8217;s Fiumicino airport at 05:20GMT, arrived on the island [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","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":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","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":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24651","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=24651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24651"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24651"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}