Pope defends migrants at Mediterranean island frontier

Pope Leo XIV on Saturday visited Italy's Lampedusa island, a major port of call for migrants risking the perilous crossing from Africa, in a stark message to US and EU leaders.

The Catholic Church's first US pope, who has clashed with the administration of President Donald Trump over its treatment of migrants, is marking July 4, the United States' 250th anniversary of independence, on a migration frontline.

Leo's visit also comes just two weeks after the European Union's approval of new migrant rules allowing much broader detention powers and the creation of deportation centres outside the bloc.

Read moreWhat's in the landmark EU migration reform hardening border protections?

After praying at the unmarked graves of shipwreck victims, the 70-year-old stood alone on the island's rocky shoreline, buffeted by the wind as he looked out to sea, where countless migrant boats have been lost to the waves.

He spoke to a migrant family before taking the children by the hand and standing along with their pregnant mother at the "Door of Europe", a monument dedicated to people who risk everything in search of a better life.

The Chicago-born pontiff has made the defence of migrants a pillar of his papacy, like his predecessor, Francis, praising those who help the needy and decrying mass deportations in the United States.

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He was expected to use the half-day trip to the Mediterranean island, a frontier between Africa and Europe, to call for safe and legal pathways for immigration.

Leo's presence "sends a clear message at a time when the global political debate on migration is often framed around borders and deterrence rather than protection and shared responsibility", Filippo Ungaro, spokesman for the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, told AFP.

'Door of Europe'

Lampedusa island, which sits just 90 miles (145 kilometres) off the coast of Tunisia, is famed not just for its white sand beaches but for showing compassion to thousands of migrants – and taking in their dead.

In 2013 more than 360 people died in the island's worst shipwreck, and dozens more have drowned in the years since.

Leo has previously praised the generosity of the islanders, a fishing and tourism community of 6,000. He will begin his visit at the cemetery, where unidentified migrants are buried in numbered graves.

Leo will also go to the pier where people rescued at sea by the coastguard or charity ships are brought to safety.

There, he will bless a plaque dedicated to Pope Francis – who chose Lampedusa for his very first trip following his election in 2013 – before celebrating mass in a sports field.

The semi-arid island of 20 square kilometres (8 square miles) is the second of Europe's migration hotspots to be visited by Leo, who used a trip to the Canary Islands last month to criticise human traffickers.

He has previously spoken out against measures to clamp down on illegal migration and called the US administration's treatment of immigrants "inhuman".

In a speech on Friday to mark America's 250th birthday, Leo called for "moderation" in US public discourse and spoke of how "successive waves of immigrants" had shaped the country.

World's deadliest route

The Central Mediterranean crossing from North Africa is the deadliest migration route in the world, according to the International Organization for Migration. Around 1,330 people died or went missing while attempting it last year, the IOM says.

That shows the "tremendous need to increase search and rescue efforts", Salvatore Sortino, director of the IOM Coordination Office for the Mediterranean, told AFP.

The route is patrolled by a handful of rescue ships operated by charities that have repeatedly accused EU authorities of not doing enough to help prevent deaths.

More than 14,000 people landed in Italy during the first six months of the year, most of whom set off from Libya, according to the UNHCR. Nearly 60 percent of them arrived in Lampedusa, it said.

The numbers are far from the peaks reached in 2011, when tens of thousands arrived in just a few months as regional governments were overthrown and maritime border controls disintegrated during the Arab Spring revolts.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)