It is also ironic that Pope Francis that same weekend met with an American Jew, who is campaigning on numerous issues that Christ taught 2,000 years ago.
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Pope Francis sent a message to Europe about the need to welcome refugees when he boarded three Syrian Muslim families aboard his charter plane back to Rome on Saturday following an emotional visit to the Greek island of Lesbos. Actions do speak louder than words.
“Today, I renew my heartfelt plea for responsibility and solidarity in the face of this tragic situation”, the pope said.
“Their homes had been bombed”, the Vatican said of the three families.
Another family with two children hailed from Damascus, while a third family with three children came from Deir el-Zour, a city close to the Iraqi border that the group calling itself Islamic State (ISIL) has been besieging for months, leading to widespread malnutrition.
Asked why they were all Muslim, he said there was something wrong with the papers of a Christian family that had originally been on the list.
One married couple, Hasan and Nour, have a two-year-old son.
Sanders spoke to Francis just before the pope traveled to meet migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos, the frontline island in Europe’s migration crisis.
The pope cited Mother Teresa in responding to a question about whether his gesture of bringing 12 refugees to Italy would change the debate about Europe’s migrant crisis.
In an interview with ABC News after the meeting, Sanders called the pope “a attractive man”, adding “I am not a Catholic, but there is a radiance that comes from him”.
He said the decision to bring the 12 Syrian refugees to Italy was a humanitarian gesture, not a political act.
The refugee families, which include six children, are to be taken in by the Vatican and will be initially cared for by the Rome-based lay community of Sant’Egidio. He said two Christian families had been on the original list, but they didn’t have their documents in order.
Pope Francis’ visit to the island of Lesbos in Greece on Saturday had quite a fallout in time and space.
Young migrants stand at a fence of the Moria detention center during the visit of Pope Francis in Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos, on April 16, 2016.
Children took pictures of the Pope with their phones as he shook hands with those gathered to greet him.
He was speaking after meeting the woman’s widowed husband on the Greek island of Lesbos over the weekend, as he was visiting refugees on the island. At a time when the Middle East is straining to accommodate the majority of Syrian refugees, and hundreds of thousands more are finding their way to Europe, the comfort offered by the Catholic pontiff can seem merely tokenistic.
These are people who were already in camps in Lesbos before a European Union-Turkey agreement in which anyone crossing into Greece illegally from Turkey will be returned.
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“And she responded, ‘It’s a drop in the ocean, but after this drop, the ocean won’t be the same, ‘” the pope said.
