VALLETTA: Pope Francis reminded Malta of its roots as a “safe harbour” in his first visit to the Mediterranean island nation on Saturday, warning it not to succumb to isolation and fear amid migrant crises on multiple fronts.

The 85-year-old pontiff’s visit to the archipelago, delayed two years due to the coronavirus pandemic, comes as war in Ukraine has unleashed Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II, with more than four million fleeing the country.

Invoking “the dark shadows of war” spreading across Eastern Europe and castigating those “provoking and fomenting conflicts”, Pope Francis similarly recalled the ongoing influx of migrants from the south who try to cross the Mediterranean to reach the island shores of Malta, given its strategic position south of Sicily and to Africa’s north.

“According to its Phoenician etymology, Malta means ‘safe harbour’,” the pope said in his opening address to Maltese dignitaries, including Prime Minister Robert Abela, at the Grandmaster’s Palace, the former seat of the Knights Hospitaller who ruled Malta for centuries.

“Nonetheless, given the growing influx of recent years, fear and insecurity have nurtured a certain discouragement and frustration,” Pope Francis said, warning against “adopting an anachronistic isolationism”.

Malta, with a population of just over a half a million inhabitants, has argued it is unfairly penalised for its geographic position and takes a disproportionate share of migrants arriving by sea from North Africa, given its small size.

The heavily Catholic country has come under fire by charity rescue groups patrolling the Mediterranean, charging that Maltese authorities turn a blind eye to migrants in peril in its waters.

“The growing migration emergency — here we can think of the refugees from war-torn Ukraine — calls for a broad-based and shared response. Some countries cannot respond to the entire problem, while others remain indifferent onlookers,” the pope said.

Addressing the conflict in Ukraine, in what appeared to be a barely veiled reference to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Francis said “some potentate, sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interests, is provoking and fomenting conflicts...” Before departing the Vatican Saturday for the two-day trip, Francis met Ukrainian refugee families newly arrived in Rome.

Asked by a reporter on the papal plane about a possible trip to Kyiv, the pope said a visit to Ukraine’s capital was “on the table”.

Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2022