Pope Francis Heads to Cyprus Aiming to Highlight Plight of Migrants

NICOSIA, Cyprus — Pope Francis arrived in Cyprus on Thursday, beginning a five-day trip that would also bring him to Greece and its island of Lesbos, where in 2016 he made a defining visit to refugees living in horrid conditions and brought some back to Rome on his plane.

The trip, the 35th abroad for Francis, who turns 85 later this month, reflects his determination to maintain a global focus on the plight of migrants and lands torn by strife, despite the world’s preoccupation this week with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The journey — which began as the Vatican said the pope had accepted the resignation of Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris, after French news media reports about his relationship with a woman — will have other hallmarks of the Francis papacy, including supporting tiny Catholic minorities and reaching out to other religious leaders, this time in the Greek Orthodox Church. Francis, who met with asylum-seekers at the Vatican near the airport before leaving for Cyprus will help relocate to Italy some migrants in Cyprus — and possibly Lesbos again.

After being greeted on the tarmac in Cyprus by dignitaries, church officials and children chanting “Francis, we love you,” Francis spoke at a ceremony at the presidential palace. “I have come as a pilgrim to a country geographically small, but historically great,” Francis said. “To an island that down the centuries has not isolated peoples but brought them together; to a land whose borders are the sea; to a place that is the eastern gate of Europe and the western gate of the Middle East.”

The trip is the third international one this year for the pope, who is believed to have received a booster shot, though that has not been confirmed. He made a historic pilgrimage to Iraq in March and a politically symbolic trip to Hungary and Slovakia in September during which he delivered a strong message against the dangers of nationalism.

This trip seeks to refocus attention on the priorities of his pontificate, including opening borders and welcoming the destitute, and comes as migrants are again facing awful conditions and tragic deaths, including at the Belarus-Poland border and in the English Channel, where at least 27 people died last week. But it also comes at an unpredictable and deeply concerning phase of the pandemic, as countries around the world shut their borders to try to protect their populations from a variant whose effects are still very much unknown.

“The recommendation in general is prudence,” Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, said when asked about coronavirus precautions and worries that the new variant would eclipse the main themes of the trip. Francis himself spoke on Thursday about how “Cyprus has been darkened by the pandemic, which has prevented many visitors from visiting it and seeing its beauty” and damaged its economy.

Francis is the second pope, after his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, to visit Cyprus, and on Thursday he met with local Catholics at the Maronite Cathedral of Our Lady of Grace. Cyprus is an ancient Christian land and tradition holds that St. Paul arrived here around A.D. 46 to preach the Gospel with Barnabas, a…