Lesbos is famous for crossing boundaries. It was the home of the poet Sappho and the tender, delicate lyrics dedicated to the woman who was her lover.
More recently it has been the home of refugees who have crossed from the murderous conflict in Asia to seek protection in Europe.
Now it is an island whose sea boundaries have been strengthened with barbed wire to keep people out of Europe before being pushed across Greek boundaries back to their old enemy, Turkey, and from there to God knows where.
Pope Francis is also as famous for crossing boundaries as we Australians are for mining and patrolling them. He is reinventing the papacy as a one-man barbed-wire-cutting team.
So it is not surprising that he decided at short notice to cross into Lesbos. He undertook his travel when he realised that the people seeking protection on Lesbos were being put into enclosed camps, facing deportation to Turkey, and perhaps return to the mortal danger from which they fled.
He went to meet vulnerable people, seeing the terror and need in their faces, listening to them speak of all that they and their families had suffered. He grieved with them and spoke plainly, saying that the European political leaders would be judged by the way in which they treated people claiming protection.
He did not go to Lesbos alone but accompanied two Greek Bishops, one of them the Ecumenical Patriarch, his equal in dignity and historical resonance.
The three men were drawn together in compassion and horror at what was suffered and at what was being devised for human beings like themselves. That enabled them to set aside the bitter historical differences between their churches and the protocols in which these divisions were protected.
"He grieved with them and spoke plainly, saying that the European political leaders would be judged by the way in which they treated people claiming protection."
Together they dropped wreaths into the sea to grieve the deaths of so many who lost their lives escaping death, and to repent of the cruelty they now endure in Europe.
Returning on the plane, he brought with him 12 people, members of three families. One was disabled, another seriously ill. And all three families were Muslim. Difficulties with papers prevented Christian families from also being chosen.
At a time when anti-Muslim prejudice has grown in Europe, here was the proud and defiant statement to Christian and secular Europe that Muslims are our brothers