Too many people fleeing extreme poverty and war die crossing the Mediterranean from Africa in search of a better life in Europe, Pope Benedict XVI said.During his midday recitation of the Angelus prayer April 5, the pope remembered the estimated 200-300 people who drowned a week earlier in the sea off the coast of Libya when stormy weather caused the sinking of the boats attempting to transport them to Italy.
"We cannot resign ourselves to such tragedies, which unfortunately keep occurring," the pope said.
The problem of the poor and oppressed trying to enter Europe through Italy and other Mediterranean countries is so large that it "makes ever more urgent coordinated strategies between the European Union and African states," the pope said.
Pope Benedict also called for "the adoption of adequate humanitarian measures so that these migrants do not turn to unscrupulous traffickers," who charge hundreds of dollars for places on overcrowded, unsafe boats.
"While I pray for the victims that the Lord would welcome them into his peace, I want to note that this problem, further aggravated by the global (economic) crisis, will find a solution only when the African populations, with the help of the international community, are able to free themselves from poverty and wars," the pope said.
Father Daniel Farrugia, vicar delegate of the apostolic vicariate of Tripoli, Libya, told Catholic News Service that, unlike Europeans or North Americans whose life expectancy is long, "for many of our brothers and sisters here death forms part of life."
For some of them, he said in an e-mail April 4, "dying at home or dying in the sea changes nothing. At least they have tried to look for a better future."
He said the deaths obviously are a tragedy for the loved ones left behind and for the church in Libya, which regularly visits the detention camps holding people who have come from across Africa and from as far away as Asia trying to get to Europe through Libya.
"We assist many of them with food, clothes and medicines," he said. "They come to us not to solve problems, but to find a caring and listening heart."
Father Farrugia said the church tries to help people "discern and understand if it is the will of God to cross to Europe." The church also refers people to international organizations that can help them return home and it tries to get immigration permits for those who already have family in Europe, he said.
"These people have no alternative but to entrust themselves to human smugglers who often treat them as meat," said Berardino Guarino, project director for Fondazione Migrantes, an Italian Catholic organization that assists migrants.
At least 200, and perhaps as many as 300, immigrants were listed as missing and presumed dead after three boats sank off the coast of Libya in rough waters March 27-29. An Italian merchant ship rescued another 300 people and recovered 21 dead bodies from the water the night of March 28-29 after the fishing boat they were packed onto sent out a distress call.
Authorities said those trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy from Libya included people from Bangladesh, Egypt and other parts of Africa. Refugees and the desperate poor from Asia and Africa cross the Libyan desert to the coast where they pay smugglers for a place on crowded, rickety fishing boats headed for Europe.
Guarino told Vatican Radio March 31 that poverty and oppression mean the influx of migrants to Europe "will not end easily, which means we must find ways to create humanitarian channels so that these people can arrive in Italy without these dangerous voyages."
"We must remember that on these boats there are refugees, people who have a right to asylum," he said. "The question will not be resolved simply by patrolling the coasts."
Oliviero Forti, director of the immigration office of Caritas Italy, told Vatican Radio, "Unfortunately this was a disaster waiting to happen. The fact that governments are enacting increasingly restrictive measures just means that the routes are changing."
Focusing only on blocking immigration has not worked and will not work, he said.
"We need a truly effective policy of international collaboration with the countries of origin and the countries of transit," he said.
"Evidently the conditions causing people to leave are so serious that even this risk (of drowning) is recognized and put into the calculation," Forti said. "Thousands of people cross the sea each year and several hundred -- maybe as many as 1,000 -- meet their deaths."
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(Source: CNS)