ROME (Agencies): Christian leaders, local government officials and humanitarian organisations raised a cry in late January after Italy’s anti-immigration interior minister, Matteo Salvini, ordered the closure of the Centre for Asylum Seekers at Castelnuovo di Porto, 24 kilometres north of Rome, CNS reported on Jasnuary 23. 
 
Pope Francis celebrated Holy Thursday Mass at the center in 2016 and washed the feet of refugees. 
 
The first 30 asylum-seekers out of 500 were transferred out on January 22. 

ROME (CNS): Some 180 migrants, most from Eritrea, arrived at Mondo Migliore, a Catholic-run centre near Rome late on August 28 after officials from the Italian Bishops’ Conference negotiated their release from the Italian coast guard ship, Ubaldo Diciotti. 
 
They had been on the vessel for 11 days.
 

ROME (CNS): Tweeting with hashtags that translate as “Closed ports” and “Open hearts,” Matteo Salvini, the interior minister of Italy, disputed claims that the Italian government was complicit in leaving a migrant to die in the Mediterranean Sea as she clung to a board from a destroyed fishing boat.
 
Salvini strongly supported Italy’s policy of having the Libyan coast guard patrol its own shores, pushing back refugee boats or taking the migrants and refugees back to camps in Libya.
 

ROME (Agencies): Spain announced it would let the SOS Méditerranée ship, Aquarius, holding 629 migrants and refugees rescued from the Mediterranean, dock in Valencia, after Italy and Malta refused to accept the vessel, CNN reported on June 11.
 
Aquarius, had been on standby between Malta and Sicily since June 10, waiting for permission to dock at a nearby port of safety, CNS reported. It had rescued hundreds of people from unsafe rubber boats and also took in another 400 people rescued by Italian vessels.