Author: Cindy Wooden | cruxnow.com | 12 May 2019
MYTILENE, Greece - Maryam Moradi and her family have lived the contrasts a Vatican cardinal saw as he visited refugee centers on the Greek island of Lesbos May 8-9.
With her husband and two sons, Moradi, 34, arrived on Lesbos by sea from Turkey in September 2016 and was taken to a tent in what officials call the Olive Grove section of the “hot spot” camp at Moria.
Most people refer to the collection of tents and tent-like shacks as the informal camp. The hillside is steep, muddy in the spring and dusty in summer. The chemical toilets are few and far between and the spigots and sinks for washing clothes are at the bottom of the hill.
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, began his visit where Moradi began her stay on Lesbos - amid the misery of the tents. He met hundreds of asylum-seekers, a half dozen government officials and a handful of folks running small projects to alleviate some of the migrants’ suffering.
Moradi, an ethnic Afghani born and raised in Iran, was among those who met the cardinal; she shared her story with Catholic News Service May 9 on a bench overlooking the sea near Mytilene. Read more>>>