Pope’s refugees grateful for new life in Rome
“They asked me ‘Are you ready to leave for Italy tomorrow? You will be on the same plane with the Pope. You must give me your answer now’,” Essa recalled as she sat on a schoolyard bench with her husband Hasan Zaheda and two-year-old son Riad.
“We were shocked,” the 30-year-old said in an interview as she and her husband prepared to start an Italian language class.
The choice was offered at about 9pm last Friday evening. Less than 18 hours later they and nine other Syrian refugees, all Muslim, were bound for Rome on the Pope’s plane.
The person who asked the questions and demanded quick answers at the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the island that night was Daniela Pompei of the Sant’ Egidio Community, a Rome-based Christian charity and peace group.
“Time was very tight,” Pompei told Reuters. “It was all moving fast.”
An aide to Pope Francis came up with the idea a week before the trip. The Vatican would sponsor the refugees and Sant’ Egidio would handle details, including housing in Rome. Vatican, Italian and Greek officials were sworn to secrecy.
Pompei said there were three basic prerequisites, the fundamental one being that those chosen had to have arrived in Greece before the March 20 deal between the European Union and Ankara to send new arrivals back to Turkey.
Families were preferred, as were those whose homes had been destroyed; all had to have proper documents.
The ones eventually chosen had been screened by Greek authorities and the EU border agency. Hundreds have died making the short but precarious crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands. Lesbos is dotted with unmarked graves.
Pompei started interviewing prospective refugees only two days before the flight to Rome, but did not tell them why.
“Certainly there was some sadness in making the choices,” Pompei said. “All of them, absolutely all of them, told us that they felt like prisoners on the island.”
Essa is a microbiologist, Zaheda a garden designer.
Asked what she would say to the Pope, Essa said: “Thank you for giving my son a nice future. You are a very kind man. You are better than our leaders or our religious men. We love you.”
