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“Germany is doing what is morally and legally necessary-no more and no less,” Merkel declared in defending an open-door policy that should quadruple arrivals of asylum seekers to about 800,000 this year. Peter’s Square as he announced the Vatican would take in two families. “Mercy is the second name of love,” the pope reminded the crowd in St. 6) urged all Catholic parishes in Europe to take in at least one refugee family, and Chancellor Angela Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, who has opened Germany’s borders to all refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria. The leading voices in Europe welcoming the asylum seekers are Pope Francis, who on Sunday (Sept. Nearly four million Syrian refugees have stayed behind in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Over 250,000 arrived in Greece from Turkey, a short route that has claimed about 100 lives so far, while the rest took the more dangerous route from Libya to Italy where about 2,600 drowned.

Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches.Ībout 380,000 people have reached Europe by sea this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. “This is a test of our human values and Christian legacy,” said the Rev. Many mainstream politicians are worried about whether the European Union can maintain its openness and tolerance amid all these tensions. That most newcomers are Muslims and violent Islamism is on the rise complicates the picture, especially in countries where elections loom and far-right parties are gaining support. Prosperous and peaceful Europe has for years been a magnet for Middle Easterners and Africans fleeing oppression and poverty in their unstable homelands. In between are a wide range of conflicting views ranging from selfless willingness to help to extreme wariness about immigrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Catholic Bishop Laszlo Kiss-Rigo was quoted as saying his country faced a Muslim invasion: “They come here with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar.’ They want to take over.” * Hungary, where the government has built a fence along its southern border to keep refugees out, wants select Christian refugees only. The leaders of its Roman Catholic and Protestant churches have welcomed refugees arriving by train in Munich and churches around the country have joined local officials in feeding and housing them. * Germany has been the most generous with the refugees, many of them Syrian Muslims fleeing war and jihadist threats in their homeland. Europe’s refugee crisis has inspired faith communities across the continent to open their doors to the newcomers and advocate for more state and private help, but the urgency of their calls and the depth of responses to them vary from country to country: