In the most prominent front-page story in its November 6 edition (“From guards of the border to guardians of brothers”), the Vatican newspaper praised the residents of the Italian town of Isola di Capo Rizzuto (map) for forming a human chain to rescue 88 migrants from Turkey whose boat ran aground off the coast (Italian article).

“Other similar stories could be added,” Gaetano Vallini commented. “Stories, and images, of great solidarity and humanity, in contrast with those of walls and fences, which tell of ever more closed and fearful societies, incapable of welcoming.”