On July 8, 2013, Pope Francis made his first apostolic journey to the Italian island of Lampedusa (map), to which thousands of migrants and refugees have fled in recent years.

Commenting on the trip, Alessandro Gisotti, vice director of the Editorial Directorate at the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, wrote that “there are events of his pontificate, and choices made by Pope Francis, that, as the years go by, take on ever greater force, as well as a dimension that, in some cases, it would be no exaggeration to call prophetic.”

“Today, humanity is confronting one of the deepest and most multi-layered crises it has faced,” Gisotti concluded. “To come out better, therefore, we must reverse course, the Pope urges us, moving away from the powerful magnet of Cain and orienting the compass of our lives decisively toward the north star of fraternity.”