The article reported further that [3]:
Thousands of crossings are expected in the coming months with estimates for the numbers reaching Italy hitting 500,000 for 2017.
Some experts believe crossings could hit more than 6,000 per day, while the EU is attempting to stop crossings, keeping people in Libya where rape, torture and murder are daily occurrences and a black slave market is active for Arab families.
The article also has a slideshow of "[d]esperate men, women and children from across Africa and the Middle East" being rescued under the caption Migrants Rescued in the Mediterranean, dated January 3, 2017. [4] Further down is another slideshow dated October 7, 2016, with the caption Migrants go to extreme lengths to cross borders showing "[d]esperate migrants fleeing Syria and surrounding places ...trying to sneak across borders in incredible ways" [5] that are devoid of human dignity.
Juxtaposing incongruously with the gut-wrenching photographs of desperate migrants (at least on this blogger's laptop) is an advertisement for what looks like a 2017 Maserati Levante S Q4, fetching a base price of US$84,250, and "[offering] zesty Italian performance backed with an expressively designed exterior—kind of like an automotive Monica Bellucci....The Levante goes on sale this fall." [6]
One can be fairly sure that the migrants and refugees who reach Italy later this year will not be picked up in a 2017 Maserati Levante SUV, nor will the pope likely arrange for a number of desperate and homeless migrants and refugees at his doorstep to be housed in the Vatican. His mercy and compassion seem to extend mostly to those far away from him and outside the of the sovereign of the Vatican City State and the jurisdiction of the Holy See.
Although the pope is a Jesuit, he will never be like Father Frans van der Lugt, "a Dutch Jesuit," "who had spent decades in Syria, [who] was executed in April 2014 by a masked gunman at the Jesuit residence in the Old City [of Homs]." [7] The April 14, 2017, LA Times article continued to report the following [8]:
The elderly priest, known as Father Francs and just three days shy of his 76th birthday, had refused to leave the rebel-occupied neighborhood, staying behind to help remaining residents, many of them elderly Christians who faced starvation. He bicycled about the zone, providing food and other aid to those stranded inside.
Van der Lugt, also known as Father Francis, was buried in the garden of the Jesuit residence where he spent the last years of his life. His grave has become a kind of pilgrimage site, a testament to the legacy of a priest who sought to build bridges between Syria’s diverse communities.
“To Father Francis, we were all the same, Muslim, Christian, Jewish — we are all humans,” noted Father Magdi Seif, the current Jesuit superior in Syria, who spoke Friday at the Jesuit residence in Homs alongside the grave of the slain Dutch cleric. “Every day we see more and more people returning to the Old City, more shops open, more children playing in the streets. This is what Father Francis would have wanted.”
This pope, a very different "Francis," a hypocrite "Francis," would rather talk in the safety of his plush surroundings than to risk his life to serve his flock and the lost sheep and be the shepherd that smell like sheep that he preached about in the past. If he opens his door and all the doors of the world's Catholic monasteries to house the continuing flood of migrants and refugees into Italy and the rest of Europe, then this blogger promises not to label him a hypocrite anymore.
[1] http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/815523/migrant-crisis-Libya-Mediterranean-europe-boats
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] http://www.caranddriver.com/maserati/levante
[7] http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-homs-christians-20170414-story.html, at the end of the article.
[8] Ibid.
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