THE Pope said today that Europe’s murderous treatment of refugees marked “the shipwreck of civilisation” as he visited the Mavrovouni refugee camp on Lesbos.

“I ask every man and woman, all of us, to overcome the paralysis of fear, the indifference that kills, the cynical disregard that nonchalantly condemns to death those on the fringes,” the pontiff said at the seaside cluster of box-like UN container-residences ringed with barbed wire.

“Let us stop ignoring reality, stop constantly shifting responsibility, stop passing off the issue of migration to others as if it mattered to no-one and was only a pointless burden to be shouldered by somebody else.”