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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Pope Francis asks for prayers ahead of visit to Lesbos

People walk toward a bus April 12 at a makeshift camp for refugees and migrants at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, Greece. Pope Francis asked Christians to pray for him before embarking on a one-day visit to the Greek island of Lesbos April 16. CNS photo/Stoyan Nenov, Reuters
People walk toward a bus April 12 at a makeshift camp for refugees and migrants at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, Greece. Pope Francis asked Christians to pray for him before embarking on a one-day visit to the Greek island of Lesbos April 16. CNS photo/Stoyan Nenov, Reuters

Pope Francis asked Christians to pray for him before embarking on a one-day visit to the Greek island of Lesbos.

“I will go together with my brothers,” Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Orthodox Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and all of Greece, “to express our closeness and solidarity to the refugees, the citizens of Lesbos and to all the Greek people who have been so generous in welcoming them,” the pope said April 13 at his weekly general audience.

“I ask you to please accompany me with prayers, invoking the light and power of the Holy Spirit and the maternal intercession of the Virgin Mary,” he added.

The pope, along with the two top Orthodox leaders of the region, will visit the island April 16 to highlight the dramatic situation of refugees stranded there.

Lesbos is just a few miles from the coast of Turkey, and for years migrants and refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East have been arriving on this and other nearby islands in an effort to reach Western Europe.

Pope Francis “wants to be there in order to draw attention to the sense of solidarity and responsibility” of all Christians, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, told reporters April 7.

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The pope wants to go to Lesbos for the same reasons that drew him to visit the Italian island of Lampedusa: to point to “the reality of refugees and immigrants” and because “he sees an important emergency” unfolding there, he said.

 


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