✣ Pope Francis visits refugees on Lesbos
What happened? Pope Francis and Orthodox leaders urged world leaders not to “ignore the colossal humanitarian crisis” caused by armed conflict throughout the world during their visit to refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos. Francis, Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and all Greece also spent time greeting the refugees and listening to their stories. The children received a pat on the head and the men a handshake. What the British media are saying The Guardian described the visit as an “extraordinary piece of political theatre”, saying that the Pope’s decision to take home with him three Muslim families was the most eloquent of papal gestures since John Paul II kissed Poland’s soil in 1979. In a leading article the paper said: “This is a direct and radical challenge to almost all the European countries’ responses to the migration crisis. For Francis, the problem is suffering, and the immediate duty of a Christian, or of any human being, is to relieve it.” Meanwhile, The Times reported that the Pope “evoked the spirit of the Good Samaritan” with his visit. But it said that Francis failed to address “the dilemma of the refugee eventually returning to a broken state”, adding that the Pope’s next trip should be the refugee settlements of Jordan. What the vaticanisti are saying Erasmus, The Economist’s religious affairs columnist, said the trip was a “political and theological minefield”, reporting that “Greece’s ultra-rightist Golden Dawn party played on atavistic sentiments by comparing the Pope’s arrival to the conquest of Greek Constantinople by Latin soldiers in 1204. But the abiding images of the visit,” Erasmus added, “were of refugees in the Moria camp bursting into tears as they met the Pontiff”. Fr Francis X Clooney of America magazine said that “something new” was happening under Francis. “I am used to the more cerebral approach of Benedict XVI, who tended to the view that the theology and doctrine needed to be worked out before the dialogue could proceed. In the papacy of Francis, it is theology that is having to catch up with the practice on the ground.”
