Daniel del Castillo Gonz\u00e1lez<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lampedusa is a small Italian island in the Mediterranean. It's the closest to the African continent and ground zero for the entrance of thousands of immigrants into Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With 12 miles of surface area and just about 6,000 inhabitants, the island has an immigrant reception center fit for only 400 people. This is not sufficient as the island received more than 150,000 immigrants in the last four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The majority of them come from Tunisia and Libya, the closest coastal countries to Lampedusa. In 2025, more than 1,000 people died en route to the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pope Francis put Lampedusa on the map as an international symbol of the migrant crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four months after his election in 2013, Francis chose the island as his first pontifical trip. His actions made it clear that, in the face of suffering migrants, indifference is not the answer, instead reception and shelter are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POPE FRANCIS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Who of us has weeped over this fact and others like it? Who has weeped over the death of these brothers and sisters? Who has weeped for those in the boats? For the young mothers who carried their children? For the men who searched for a way to support their families? We are a society that has forgotten what it means to weep.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He painted pictures such as these: a cemetery full of nameless tombs, a flower crown in the sea and an altar made of parts of a dinghy. These are all symbols belonging to an unfortunate reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His successor, Pope Leo XIV, now reiterates these images, only four days before Pope Francis did in 2013. Something he also did during his papal trip to the Canary Islands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There, the pope blessed a cross made from the wood of a canoe and now, in Lampedusa, he is repeating what he said in Spain: that human dignity has no passport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Daniel del Castillo Gonz\u00e1lez Lampedusa is a small Italian island in the Mediterranean. It's the closest to the African continent and ground zero for the entrance of thousands of immigrants into Europe. With 12 miles of surface area and just about 6,000 inhabitants, the island has an immigrant reception center fit for only 400 people. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":758,"featured_media":92046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"acf":{"video":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/SZjOM5iof2o","video_descarga":"https:\/\/attuale.romereports.com\/news\/bdatilampedusaeng.mp4","international_url":"https:\/\/attuale.romereports.com\/news\/bdatilampedusaint.mp4","type":"bn","newsletter":"si"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92050"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92050"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92053,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92050\/revisions\/92053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}