[fforflo]

In 2021, during a visit to the Greek island of Mytilene, Pope Francis delivered one of the finest speeches I've ever read:

> This great basin of water, the cradle of so many civilizations, now looks like a mirror of death. Let us not let our sea (mare nostrum) be transformed into a desolate sea of death (mare mortuum). Let us not allow this place of encounter to become a theatre of conflict. Let us not permit this “sea of memories” to be transformed into a “sea of forgetfulness”. Please brothers and sisters, let us stop this shipwreck of civilization!

> We are in the age of walls and barbed wire. To be sure, we can appreciate people’s fears and insecurities, the difficulties and dangers involved, and the general sense of fatigue and frustration, exacerbated by the economic and pandemic crises. Yet problems are not resolved and coexistence improved by building walls higher, but by joining forces to care for others according to the concrete possibilities of each and in respect for the law, always giving primacy to the inalienable value of the life of every human being

Worth reading in full https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2021/de...

[ryao]

I had no idea anyone still used the term “mare nostrum”. I believe it began to be used during the Roman Empire when the Romans had conquered all lands surrounding the Mediterranean. Back then, the term meant the sea belonged to them and no one else. That meaning no longer applies in the modern day, so using it today would mean “we all share this” rather than the original meaning. His use of the term was a clever way to invoke shared history.

[hibikir]

It's not that weird a term: I was taught this as the Roman name for the Mediterranean in middle school history class in Spain, without having to take Latin. There's a boardgame and a video game with Mare Nostrum as the title. I's expect relatively well educated people in countries bordering the Mediterranean to understand what he meant with little trouble, especially if they are also speak a latin-derived language. For instance in Spanish, mare is just mar, nostrum would be nuestro, and mortuum is muerto. It'd all be trivial first guesses.

[parsimo2010]

You are correct that most people do not use the term any more. But the Pope isn't like most people. It's an informal requirement that the Pope be able to speak Latin and Italian is commonly used in the Vatican (being surrounded by Italy probably has something to do with that). Even though Francis was not as fluent as his predecessors in Latin and Italian, he certainly understood it better than most and his speechwriters probably were probably proficient in Latin.

[mrzool]

It was also the name of a major Italian naval operation to rescue migrants crossing the Mediterranean in 2013–2014, launched after a particularly tragic shipwreck near Lampedusa. The operation was shut down after just one year due to high costs and limited support from the EU, which left Italy largely on its own.

Definitely not surprising hearing a pope using it in a speech.

[Pamar]

For "older generations" in Italy it is absolutely fine as a reference.

Not sure about Gen Z and younger people though.

[Aidevah]

Isn't Mytilene a city while the island itself is called Lesvos?

[fforflo]

Technically yes, but they're used interchangeably nowdays. Plus, the official transcript mentions "Mytilene" so I wanted to follow that. Although I use Lesvos myself.

[Imustaskforhelp]

I am really sorry for pope francis's death. I truly am. But to me, this was the first time that I ever saw that vatican has its .va and vatican.va ....

Out of curiosity, Who hosts the holy servers?

Again I don't want to demean anyone's death.

[philsnow]

> Out of curiosity, Who hosts the holy servers?

The Dicastery for Communcation [0]. They're ASN 8978, and geolocation for all their IP addresses says that they're actually in the Vatican city state.

[0] https://www.comunicazione.va/en.html

[gnulinux996]

Small correction; the name of the island is Lesbos

[trizuz]

Ironically, the Vatican has very high border walls of them all. Maybe the highest in the world even. https://www.sheridan.com/wp-content/uploads/NL_vatican-city-...

[contrarian1234]

With no opinion one way or another on the pope.. In the modern world this is a weird criteria to judge people on. I assume like every modern politician, he doesn't write his own speeches. A quite google search seems to confirm it

https://cruxnow.com/church/2015/02/does-the-pope-write-his-o...

[wat10000]

Who cares? He said it. The words are his responsibility. If his speech had advocated for grinding orphans into a nutritious paste, we wouldn’t be defending him on the basis that he didn’t write those words. He chose to read them and give them his official backing.

[ralfd]

The link says:

> My suspicion is that Pope Francis may have more to do with crafting his own speeches than did previous pontiffs, because Pope Francis’ talks strike me as more spontaneous, conversational, and unfiltered.

Anyway, a public figure is still giving the direction and “plot points” to their speech writer.

[aredox]

That pope was part of the Jesuits. If you don't know who the Jesuits are, let's just say they are amongst the most academically trained, most intellectual catholic religious orders there is.

Even if Pope Francis gave the charge of writing his speeches to someone else, that would be an heavy responsability for that person.

[mym1990]

JFK didn't write his own speeches either for the most part, he was still a heck of an orator.