ATHENS – Main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras on Monday, in a post on Facebook, thanked Pope Francis for the “clear sincerity of his words and his solid support for human rights and social justice,” during their meeting earlier the same day.

Tsipras said that he had the opportunity to discuss with Pope Francis the hypocrisy shown by EU governments with respect to the human tragedy of migrants and refugees, in talking about human rights while at the same time building fences and reject any legal migration route. They also talked about the widening of the inequalities, poverty and of social exclusion throughout the planet, about the greed of the developed world and its refusal to lift the Covid vaccine patents that would make possible the mass vaccination of millions of people in poorer countries. A greed that was soon “revenged” through the continuous mutations of the virus which “showed that nobody can be safe anywhere unless all people were safe everywhere”.

Finally, Tsipras thanked Pope Francis for his reference to the Prespes Agreement, noting that if his government has succeeded in making a small contribution to the effort to build a peaceful co-existence and counteract nationalism, that divided people and brought wars and conflicts, “we have walked on the right side of history.”