ROME, April 22 (Reuters) – Pope Francis urged governments on Saturday to get migrants and refugees out of holding centers, saying many had become “concentration camps.”

During a visit to a Rome basilica, where he met migrants, Francis told of his visit to a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos last year. "These teach us that with the force of love and with meekness one can fight arrogance, violence and war, and that with patience peace is possible," the pope said in his homily in the small basilica on Rome's Tiber Island. Departing from his prepared homily, Francis recounted how he was touched when last year, during a visit to a migrant detention facility in Lesbos, Greece, a Muslim father of three told him that his Christian wife had her throat slit when 'terrorists came ... and asked what our religion was.'" Departing from his prepared homily, Francis recounted how he was touched when last year, during a visit to a migrant detention facility in Lesbos, Greece, a Muslim father of three told him that his Christian wife had her throat slit when 'terrorists came ... and asked what our religion was.'" There he met a Muslim refugee from the Middle East who told him how “terrorists came to our country.” Islamists had slit the throat of the man’s Christian wife because she refused to throw her crucifix the ground. According to Reuters, islamists cut the throat of the man's Christian wife because she refused to throw her crucifix on the ground

Pope Francis said: “I don't know if he managed to leave that concentration camp, because refugee camps, many of them, are of concentration (type) because of the great number of people left there inside them”. He praised the “generosity” of people in migrant landing spots like Italy’s Lampedusa and Lesbos, and hoped this “could rub off a little on the north.”

Before Francis’ homily, friends and relatives of slain Christians – including the sister of Father Jacques Hamel, an 86-year-old French priest killed last year in an Islamist attack – spoke before a packed congregation.
Pope Francis, while honoring Christians killed under Nazism, communism, dictatorships, and terrorism at Rome's Basilica of St. Bartholomew, adds to those named the wife of a Muslim he met in Lesbos, Greece, who was killed by terrorists because she wouldn't throw down her crucifix. Francis referred to the Lesbos camp as a 'concentration camp' noting, despite the good will of local communities, many refugee camps are overcrowded and little more than prisons.