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Germans welcome refugees as EU struggles to make united stand

– ‘Christian fortress Europe’ –

The human cost of Europe’s refugee crisis, which has seen more than 350,000 people attempt the perilous crossing from North Africa this year, was brought into sharp focus by pictures of a Syrian toddler found dead on a Turkish beach last week.

In a passionate speech Sunday to members of his Christian Democratic party in Milan, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi pointed to a picture of the drowned Syrian child, and said there were “thousands like him”.

“We need rules, we cannot take in everyone,” said Renzi. “But nothing will ever stop us trying to save a life whenever possible. This is our challenge.”

But Turkish Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu, whose country has become a key transit route for refugees fleeing war in neighbouring Syria, on Sunday lashed out at the “ridiculously small” share of refugees EU countries were accepting.

Writing in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he hit out at “Christian fortress Europe” pointing out that Turkey had already taken in more than two million people from war-torn Syria and Iraq.

His remarks came just days after Hungary, which is building a wall to keep out refugees after some 50,000 new arrivals in August alone, raised the alarm over the impact of mainly Muslim refugees on Europe’s “Christian culture”.

But Pope Francis urged a different approach in his Sunday sermon, urging “every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe” to take in a family.

“Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of asylum-seekers fleeing death (as) victims of war and hunger who are hoping to start a new life, the gospel calls on us to be the neighbour of the smallest and the most abandoned.”

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The Vatican’s two parishes would take in two refugee families “in the coming days”, he said, setting an example for more than 50,000 other parishes across the continent.

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