This is the first trip by a sovereign pontiff to Athens since 2001. Francis must also go to Lesbos, an island emblematic of the migration crisis, where he had already moved in 2016.
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After Cyprus, Pope Francis arrived in Greece on Saturday, December 4, for a two-and-a-half-day visit to meet the country’s Orthodox Christians. The Argentine pontiff delivered a speech to political, civil and diplomatic authorities at the presidential palace in Athens. Faced with the arrival of migrants at its gates, Europe “persists in procrastinating: the European community, torn apart by nationalist selfishness, sometimes appears blocked and uncoordinated, instead of being a motor of solidarity”, he said in particular. Quoting in turn the “weather”, the “pandemic”, the “common market” and the “widespread poverty“, he reiterated that the international community needed a “concrete and active collaboration” through “a multilateralism that is not stifled by excessive nationalist claims”.
The sovereign pontiff has already visited the Greek island of Lesbos in 2016, but it is the first visit of a pope to Athens in twenty years, since the visit of John Paul II in May 2001. In a video published shortly before his departure from Rome, the Pope presented himself in “pilgrim” to meet “all, not just Catholics”, a minority of 1.2% in a country with a large majority of Orthodox religion, not separate from the State. The pope says he wants “to quench one’s thirst at the sources of fraternity” and strengthen its ties with its “brothers of faith”, Orthodox Christians, separated from the Catholic Church since the schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople.
His two-and-a-half-day stay in Greece will also be marked on Sunday by another whirlwind visit to Lesvos, emblematic of the migration crisis, where he said he would go. “to the sources of humanity“to plead for the reception and “the integration” refugees. Forty migrant defense NGOs have asked to meet with him, urging him to intervene to put an end to the alleged refoulements of exiles at the Greek-Turkish borders. On Friday in Cyprus, Pope Francis had already called for “open the eyes” in front of’“slavery” and the “torture”, suffered by migrants in the camps.