Thousands more migrants streamed into Germany Sunday, greeted with cheers and "welcome" signs, as Pope Francis called on every Catholic parish in Europe to take in a refugee family. In moving scenes, the newcomers clutching their children and sparse belongings stepped off trains to applause from well-wishers who held balloons, snapped photos and gave them water, food and clothes. German police said they expected a record 10,000 refugees to arrive in the southern state of Bavaria alone by the end of the day.
"The people here treat us so well, they treat us like real human beings, not like in Syria," said Mohammad, 32, from the devastated town of Qusayr, his eyes welling up with tears.
Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II has exposed a growing east-west rift within the EU, with frontline Hungary - which first held back migrants, but later sent them on to Austria and Germany - rejecting the bloc's "failed immigration policy".
Hungary's conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has sought to secure his country's Serbian border with a fence, has voiced concern about mostly Muslim refugees undermining what he called Europe's Christian identity.
Pope Francis, however, in a Sunday sermon stressed it was Christian to help those in desperate need and urged "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, to give them concrete hope," he said in Saint Peter's Square in Rome. 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.
Europe's conscience has been pricked by pictures of the lifeless body of three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi lying on a Turkish beach.
Turkish police officer Mehmet Ciplak, who was pictured cradling the toddler's body, has recounted how he prayed the little boy was still alive as he walked towards him and scooped him up from the water's edge. "When I approached the baby, I said to myself, 'Dear God I hope he's alive.' But he showed no signs of life. I was crushed," he told Turkey's Dogan news agency, "I have a six-year-old son. The moment I saw the baby, I thought about my own son and put myself into his father's place. Words cannot describe what a sad and tragic sight it was." The scale of suffering has led Germany in recent days to drop normal formalities and allow in vastly higher numbers of refugees.
As train and busloads have kept on coming from Hungary, Germany took in another 6,000 people by 1500 GMT Sunday and expected 4,000 more through the day, after about 8,000 refugees arrived on Saturday, police told AFP.
In all, Europe's most populous nation expects 800,000 new asylum applications this year - four times last year's total and more than any other EU nation - at an estimated cost to the state of 10 billion euros ($11 billion). As refugees got off trains, police directed them to waiting buses bound for temporary shelters, which have been set up in public buildings, hotels and army barracks across the country.
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