VATICAN CITY -- As the remains of a rickety boat, pulled from the floor of the Mediterranean Sea, were enshrined as a memorial to the hundreds of migrants who died when it sank, Pope Francis prayed that such tragedies would “challenge everyone’s conscience and foster the growth of a more supportive humanity that tears down the wall of indifference.”

NAPLES, Italy -- The Mediterranean Sea, which has been and again could be a route for a meeting of peoples and cultures, instead is a "border not to be crossed" between the poor South and the wealthy North, said Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

BERLIN – Sitting on the bare pavement outside a Catholic church, an Afghan refugee woman, dressed in a bright floral headscarf, calls out plaintively to passersby, begging for coins.

MANCHESTER, England – U.K. Catholic leaders urged the British government to accept more child refugees from northern France after reports that hundreds of young people are being forced to sleep outdoors in low temperatures.