Pope Francis lamented this Sunday that “almost 2,000 men, women and children have died since the beginning of the year trying to reach Europe through the Mediterranean Sea and called for “political and diplomatic efforts” to prevent further tragedies.”
“It is with pain and shame that we must say that since the beginning of the year almost 2,000 men, women and children have died at sea trying to reach Europe, an open wound in our humanity,” declared the Pope, after the Angelus prayer, in the Vatican. .
Before thousands of people gathered in Saint Peter’s Square, Francis called for “political and diplomatic efforts” that seek to “cure” the migratory drama “in a spirit of solidarity and fraternity.”
Francis also called for the commitment of all those involved in this drama “to prevent shipwrecks and rescue those who sail.”
“Let us not remain indifferent to these tragedies and pray for the victims and their families,” the Pope declared Thursday, upon learning that 41 people had disappeared after the boat in which they were traveling capsized shortly after leaving the Tunisian port. Sfax city.
The situation in the Mediterranean is dramatic, with dozens of precarious ships trying to reach European shores.
Today, only on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the closest to the African coast, more than 2,000 migrants are waiting to be treated at the reception center, which only has a capacity for 400 people.
Faced with the impossibility of attending to all the boats, the Italian government asked for help from humanitarian ships such as the Ocean Viking, which claims to have rescued 623 people in 15 rescue operations.
The Spanish non-governmental organization Open Arms saved 60 migrants with its Astral sailboat, which landed in Sicily on Saturday and began another search and rescue operation with its vessel.
The Tunisian Coast Guard also recovered the bodies of a baby and a 20-year-old boy who died in the sinking, on Saturday, of a boat carrying about twenty immigrants off the coast of Gabès, in Tunisia.
In Greece, authorities rescued 60 migrants who were trapped on a sailboat in the Ionian Sea, southwest of the Peloponnese peninsula.
In Spain, until this week Salvamento Marítimo Español rescued more than 800 migrants who were trying to reach the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic, the majority of sub-Saharan origin.
Source: TSF
