Francesco: “Please, let’s stop this sinking of civilization”
“Please, let’s stop this sinking of civilization.” It is the day of the return of Francis in Lesbos, among the refugees of the ‘Reception and Identification Center’ of Mytilene, the Mavrovouni camp that replaced that of Moria, not far away, destroyed by a fire in September 2020. “I’m here to tell you that I’m close to you. I’m here to see your faces, to look into your eyes “.
The Pope had gone to Moria on April 16, 2016 and returned shocked: “What I saw, the children … It was to cry”. Now the tent city of Moria has been replaced by rows of containers by the sea, a somewhat cloudy but clear day, between the fishermen’s boats and the patrol boats a few miles away you can clearly see the coast of Turkey, they all came from there. Like Masa Amini who has been on the island “for two years and four months” with her husband Mohammad and daughter Msoooma, eight years old, all fled from Afghanistan like Zami Ali, who is sixteen years old and she too, she says opening her black eyes wide over her mask, hopes “that the Pope can do something for us, tell the world about our situation , I have been in Lesbos for two years here it is a bit better than Moria but in winter it is cold in containers, often there is no electricity, we are seven in the family… “.
Tin roofs, plastic tarpaulins to protect humidity, laundry hanging out to dry in the narrow corridors between the containers, children playing with cats. The police supervise the exits, Francesco speaks under an awning set up not far away in which a few dozen refugees have been admitted. But he sees them, and says: “If we want to leave again, let’s look at the faces of the children. We find the courage to be ashamed in front of them, who are innocent and are the future. The sea is becoming a cold cemetery without tombstones. Let’s not let the sea go. nostrum transforms into a desolating mare mortuum, that this meeting place becomes a theater of confrontation “.
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