Pope, on Lesbos, Laments That for Migrants, ‘Little Has Changed’
The New York Times
At a Greek refugee camp, Francis sought to restore compassion for asylum seekers, whose plight he called a “shipwreck of civilization.”
LESBOS, Greece — Pope Francis returned Sunday to a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, the site of one of the definitive moments of his papacy, seeking to elevate the plight of migrants — what he called a “shipwreck of civilization” — to the top level of global concerns, along with the pandemic and climate change.
“Five years have passed since I visited this place,” Francis said in a tent overlooking the camp, where he walked through white United Nations containers serving as asylum seekers’ homes. In 2016, he took 12 refugees home with him to Rome. This time, he offered comfort and solidarity to families who had been stuck there for years. “After all this time,” he added, “we see that little has changed with regard to the issue of migration.”
Francis’ remarks came at one of the concluding, and in many ways culminating, events of a five-day trip to Cyprus and Greece meant to renew focus on migration, an issue he has never wavered on, even as the world’s attention has faltered. And when the world has paid attention, it has usually been in a way opposite from how he had hoped.
