Pope: Open doors to refugees

MUNICH - Issuing a broad appeal to Europe's Catholics, Pope Francis on Sunday called on "every" parish, religious community, monastery, and sanctuary to take in one refugee family - an appeal that, if honored, would offer shelter to tens of thousands.

Francis delivered his call as thousands of refugees detained for days in Hungary continued streaming into Germany and Austria, and as a small but rising number of volunteers are offering to take some in.

The Vatican itself will shelter at least two families of refugees who are "fleeing death" from war or hunger, the pope announced Sunday as he urged others to do the same.

Even as the pope was greeted with a rousing round of applause following his appeal in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, some Germans were asking how far their country could go in receiving more refugees.

The pope, who has already thrust himself into polarizing debates over climate change and free market economics, has now entered the fray again, this time over how Europe should handle its largest wave of refugees since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The majority of those coming are Muslims from Syria, Iraq, and other nations, and Francis weighed in just as anti-migrant politicians, including senior European leaders, are wielding religion as a weapon.

Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, where Roman Catholicism is the largest religion, just last week proclaimed Europe's "Christian identity" under threat because "those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture."

Francis, a leader already known for mending the sometimes wobbly bridges between Catholicism and other faiths, delivered a direct challenge to such thinking.

"Facing the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees - fleeing death by war and famine, and journeying towards the hope of life - the Gospel calls, asking of us to be close to the smallest and forsaken, to give them a concrete hope," he said. "And not just to tell them: 'Have courage, be patient!' "

At Munich's sprawling train station on Sunday, German officials and well-wishers greeted arriving refugees as they disembarked from westbound trains looking haggard and clutching their meager belongings. One disabled boy without a wheelchair was carried through the station by a volunteer and taken to an emergency first aid station for treatment. Those arriving - most of them Syrian asylum-seekers, but also some from Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere - were bused to processing centers for hot meals and temporary shelter.

Despite Germany's generosity, there were warning signs of the mounting pressures. Cracks opened in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition as allies questioned her decision to make Germany the most accepting in Europe. Berlin expects 800,000 asylum-seekers this year, about 1 percent of the country's population.

Leaders must stop the "mass influx of refugees coming only to Germany," said Andreas Scheuer, the general secretary of Merkel's southern German sister party, the center-right Christian Socialist Union, in an interview in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

And in Austria, authorities said they planned to halt efforts to welcome refugees with special trains and speedy processing, a sign of the competing pulls in a nation that has been ambivalent about the refugee burden.

The inability of Europe's leaders to forge a unified response has in some ways only encouraged the flow of refugees, and deepened the crisis.

From almost the beginning of his papacy, Francis has focused on the plight of refugees.

On Sunday, he said refugee families would be offered shelter inside the two parishes within the jurisdiction of Vatican City. The extent to which the pope's call will provoke a response was unclear, but some heeded a message that seemed to echo the Bible verse, "for I was a stranger and you took me in."