Prompted by a sea tragedy involving the apparent deaths of dozens of Eritreans trying to reach Italy in a rubber raft, the Vatican and the Italian bishops urged authorities to guarantee rescue, medical help and respect to migrants in trouble.

On Aug. 20, Italian maritime border police rescued five Eritreans off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. The survivors recounted that more than 70 others had died of hunger and thirst during a three-week voyage from Libya, and said that no passing vessels had stopped to save them, although some fishermen had given them some food.

Archbishop Antonio Maria Veglio, president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, said in an interview with Vatican Radio Aug. 23 that such tragedies call for a "strong and farsighted policy of international cooperation."

He said that while governments have the legitimate right to regulate immigration "there is nevertheless the human right to be rescued and given emergency help." He said this right is even more necessary in extreme situations, "such as being adrift in the middle of the sea."

Archbishop Veglio referred to the recent encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI, "Charity in Truth," which said that "every migrant is a human person" who "possesses inalienable fundamental rights."

"Our so-called civil societies in reality have developed feelings of refusal toward foreigners, that come not only from a lack of knowledge about others, but also from a selfishness in which one doesn't want to share what others don't have," Archbishop Veglio said.

Since 1988, he said, 14,660 migrants have died trying to reach Europe.

An editorial in Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, said the indifference to the plight of Africans who risk their lives fleeing poverty and war was comparable to the lack of public opposition as the Holocaust unfolded in Nazi Germany. It criticized tough new Italian legislation, which includes sending back the rickety boats to Libyan coasts, as "the law of not seeing."

"Certainly, the people then didn't know; but those long trains, the voices, the screams in the train stations --- did nobody see or hear? Then, it was totalitarianism and terror that closed people's eyes. Today, no. There is a quiet, resigned indifference, if not an irritated aversion, that has fallen over the Mediterranean," the editorial said.

The position of church leaders has put them at odds with some members of the Italian government, which has defended the new laws as necessary to halt a steady flow of illegal immigration.

Reforms Minister Umberto Bossi, the founder of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, said, "the Vatican should open its own doors" to refugees and "give a good example."

The Italian government defended its handling of the situation, saying that it rescued the five Eritreans when no one else would.

Roberto Calderoli, another government minister from the Northern League, said that Archbishop Veglio's comments to Vatican Radio should not be considered representative of the Vatican or the Italian bishops' conference.

Archbishop Veglio replied in a communique that as head of the pontifical council he was authorized to comment in the name of the Holy See and that he had never been contradicted by the Holy See or the Italian bishops' conference.

"My comments came from a solid, tragic fact: the deaths of many people, without accusing anyone, but calling everyone to take responsibility," he said.

---CNS