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Pope Francis travelled Saturday to Greece for a brief but provocative visit to meet with refugees at a detention center as the European Union implements a controversial plan to deport them back to Turkey.(Photo: Filippo Monteforte, AP)
LESBOS, Greece —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>After a tearful visit to a refugee center on this Greek island Saturday and an emotional appeal to European leaders to do more to help the displaced, Pope Francis invited three families of refugees -- all Muslims from Syria -- to fly back with him to Rome on his plane.
Two of the families are from Damascus, and one is from an area of Syria now occupied by the Islamic State militant<span style="color: Red;">*</span>group, according to the Vatican press office.
The Vatican said Pope Francis "desired to make a gesture of welcome regarding refugees" and worked out an agreement between the Greek and Italian<span style="color: Red;">*</span>authorities.
The 12 refugees — including six children<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>will be cared for in Rome by the Community of Sant'Egidio, a Catholic lay organization dedicated to charity, the Vatican said. The Vatican is already hosting two refugee families in Rome.
It was a dramatic end to a highly charged five-hour visit to Lesbos in which tears flowed as Pope Francis traveled to the epicenter of the refugee crisis and the pontiff called on European leaders to do more to help the tens of thousands of refugees stuck in this country.
"Refugees are not numbers; they are people who have faces, names stories and need to be treated as such," Francis tweeted.
It also came as the European Union begins to implements a controversial plan to deport refugees from Greece back to Turkey.
When the pope visited the fenced Moria detention center for a meeting with a selective group of refugees, one young girl fell sobbing to her knees in front of him. The pontiff gently lifted her to her feet and stroked her hair. <span style="color: Red;">*</span>A woman told the pope that her husband was in Germany, but that she was stuck with her two sons in Lesbos.
The pope made the rounds among many of the refugees, shaking hands with young people along a fence and later addressing the group.
"I want to tell you that you are not alone," he said in prepared remarks. "In these weeks and months, you have endured much suffering in your search for a better life. <span style="color: Red;">*</span>Many of you felt forced to flee situations of conflict and persecution for the sake, above all, of your children, your little ones."
He was met at the airport by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras along with Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, and the Archbishop of Athens.
Francis thanked Tsipras for the "generosity" shown by the Greek people in welcoming foreigners despite their economic troubles and called for a response to the migration crisis that respects European and international law, the Vatican said.
Pope Francis blesses a man kneeling in front of him, at the Moria refugee camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos, Saturday, April 16, 2016.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Filippo Monteforte, AP)
Tsipras, for his part, said he was proud of Greece's response "at a time when some of our partners — even in the name of Christian Europe — were erecting walls and fences to prevent defenseless people from seeking a better life," according to the Associated Press.
Francis and the two Orthodox leaders, officially divided from Catholics over a 1,000-year schism, then traveled to the main detention center on Lesbos for a five-hour visit with some 250 refugees stuck there.
Hours before Francis arrived, the European border patrol agency Frontex intercepted a dinghy carrying 41 Syrians and Iraqis off the coast of Lesbos. The refugees were detained and brought to shore in the main port of Mytilene, the Associated Press reports.
The wreath-tossing ceremony scheduled for later Saturday is a gesture Francis first made when he visited the Italian island of Lampedusa in the summer of 2013, his first trip outside Rome as Pope, after a dozen migrants died trying to reach the southern tip of Europe. He made a similar gesture more recently at the U.S.-Mexican border, laying a bouquet of flowers next to a large crucifix at the Ciudad Juarez border crossing in memory of migrants who died trying to reach the U.S.
"Refugees and migrants in Lesbos are like an exhibit,” said Stratis Pallis, 26, a psychotherapist who has been working with migrants in the camps on the island. "Everyone comes to see them, the famous and the ordinary. These visits help neither the refugees nor the visitors, as the situation doesn't change."
But travel agent Maria Androulaki said the pontiff’s bore a message of compassion that was fitting for an island that has been the transit hub in the past year for almost 1 million migrants fleeing the Middle East and North Africa in search of peace and jobs in Europe. Hundreds have died in the crossing. Many have been buried in the island’s soil.
"I don't see anything negative in the pope's visit,” Androulaki said. “All the world's eyes will be on Lesbos. Millions of people will learn about Lesbos and the island will be televised throughout the world. The refugee crisis taught us to be more humane."<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
The three men had lunch with a group of the detainees at the Moria camp, formerly a housing center for refugees but one now turned into a detention center – its residents are barred from leaving the facility as officials process their asylum applications. <span style="color: Red;">*</span>
“At Moria detention camp on Lesbos, we witnessed with our own eyes the crushing impact the EU-Turkey deal is having on men, women and children, including a large number of vulnerable refugees, being held arbitrarily," said Gauri van Gulik, Deputy Director for Europe at Amnesty International. "The Pope should make clear that the failure to change course would be Europe’s shame.”
One, Nour Essa a 30-year-old Palestinian-Syrian scientist, will be relocated along with her 3-year-old son and her husband.
The family fled after her husband was being pressured to join the Syrian army.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
"We heard of the EU-Turkey deal which would be implemented on March 20 and decided despite the bad weather to get on one of the boats to Lesbos," she said. "We were very lucky: Friends of ours that were living with us in Turkey that came the next day, were not given papers and are still in jail in Moria camp. Instead, we will be refugees in Italy!"
"He is slightly provocative," said George Demacopoulos, chair of Orthodox Christian studies at the Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York. Citing Francis' Mexico border visit in February, in the heat of a U.S. presidential campaign where illegal immigration took center stage, he added: "He is within his purview to do so, but that was a provocative move."
The Vatican insists Saturday's visit is purely humanitarian and religious in nature, not political or a "direct" criticism of the EU plan.
But spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters that Francis' position on Europe's "moral obligation" to welcome refugees is well-known, and that the EU-Turkey deportation deal certainly has "consequences on the situation of the people involved."
The Vatican official in charge of migrants, Cardinal Antonio Maria Veglio, was even more explicit, saying the EU-Turkey plan essentially treats migrants as merchandise that can be traded back and forth and doesn't recognize their inherent dignity as human beings.
The March 18 deal stipulates that anyone arriving clandestinely on Greek islands on or after March 20 will be returned to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece. For every Syrian sent back, the EU will take another Syrian directly from Turkey for resettlement in Europe. In return, Turkey was granted concessions including billions of euros to deal with the more than 2.7 million Syrian refugees living there, and a speeding up of its stalled accession talks with the EU.
Human rights groups have denounced the deal as an abdication of Europe's obligations to grant protection to asylum-seekers.
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