A cardinal has celebrated Mass standing in a refugee boat in front of a German cathedral. Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, who stood in the boat outside Cologne Cathedral on Thursday, called for compassion for migrants and refugees. Hundreds of people witnessed the liturgy. The boat had been formerly used to transport refugees across the Mediterranean. Read more
A surge of migrant deaths in deadly voyages across the Mediterranean Sea has become a modern-day refugee crisis. But the Rev. Mussie Zerai, a 40-year-old Roman Catholic priest from tiny Eritrea, north of Ethiopia, has moved to help migrants trapped in the North African deserts and rickety wooden boats drifting across the sea. “It is Read more
Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, recently gave a wide-ranging interview in regard to the role of Russia in the Mediterranean among other matters. What results can an agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme bring for peace in the Middle East? Why does the Holy See view it as a positive thing? Read more
The images and words are so very similar. Back then, the German chancellor said she was “deeply upset” — today she is “appalled.” Back then, the president of the European Commission said he would never forget the dead, and that something had to change — today he claims: “The status quo is not an option.” Read more
Over the centuries, Italy’s image has fluctuated in northern Europe. Italians have been associated with dancing masters, fencing tutors, glass makers, opera divas and tenors – and the provenance of the pizza and ice cream. In Albania, despite Italy’s wartime invasion of that country, the fondest memory retained was that of Italian ice cream, which Read more
Workers at the Warsaw headquarters of Frontex, the European border protection agency, track every single irregular boat crossing and every vessel filled with refugees. Since December 2013, the authority has spent hundreds of millions of euros deploying drones and satellites to surveil the borders. The EU registers everything that happens near its borders. In contrast Read more
Sobbing and shaking, Mohamed Abdallah tries to explain why he still wants to risk crossing the Mediterranean Sea in an inflatable boat. He sits in a migrant detention centre in Zawya, Libya, surrounded by hundreds of fellow asylum seekers who nearly died this week at sea. They survived only after being intercepted, detained and brought Read more
Pope Francis has called for much broader involvement from European nations to combat the loss of lives of African refugees crossing the Mediterranean. In the latest incident, hundreds are feared dead after a boat carrying an estimated 700 people capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Nearly 200,000 people have been rescued at sea by Read more
The boat sank quickly. One minute Fahad Abdul Kariem was wedged into the hold, legs apart so that another migrant could sit in front of him. The next, the Mediterranean swell was rolling the vessel, the motion aggravated by the scores of African and Indian migrants clinging to the roof canopy. And everyone was in Read more