Pope Francis to visit refugees in Greece as deportations stall

PanARMENIAN.Net - Pope Francis will travel to the Greek island of Lesbos on the frontline of Europe's refugee crisis next week, Athens announced Tuesday, April 5, as a controversial EU accord to send migrants back to Turkey stalled, AFP reports.

"The Greek government will welcome Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as valuable defenders of support to refugees," a government source in Athens said, adding the trip would happen on April 14 or 15.

"Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will go with (them) to the island of Lesbos," a tourist hub that has been transformed into a major gateway for new arrivals seeking a better life in Europe, AFP says.

Hundreds of thousands of people have landed on the island's shores over the past year after crossing over from Turkey in flimsy boats, part of Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II.

Brussels sought to tackle the problem by signing an agreement with Ankara last month to send new arrivals back to Turkey, in exchange for resettling some of the millions of Syrians living in refugee camps on its soil.

The deal has already contributed to a slowing of new arrivals, and Germany's interior minister said Tuesday that his country could lift temporary border controls brought in last year by mid-May if the arrivals continue to dwindle.

But the deal has been slammed by rights groups, the UN and even the pope, who used his Easter address to criticise the "rejection" of refugees, and has been slowed by a last-minute rush of asylum applications, AFP says.

The Greek Orthodox Church said it had approved the papal visit to Lesbos after Francis expressed a desire to "shed light on the major humanitarian problem" of the migrant influx.