The Syrian refugees taken in by Pope Francis following his visit to the Greek island of Lesbos have hailed the pontiff as a "saviour" for offering them a new life.Wafa, who was also on the papal flight from Lesbos with her husband Osama, eight-year-old daughter Masa and six-year-old son Omar, together with her husband, described the "constant bombardments" in recent months around their home.In a hugely symbolic move seen as a lesson in solidarity for Europe, Pope Francis, who is himself the son of Italian migrants in Argentina, on Saturday took 12 Syrians from three families — all Muslims — home with him from Lesbos to the Vatican.".After fleeing to Turkey, Hasan and his family joined the migrant trail to Europe, piling into a rubber dinghy that set out from the Turkish coast for Greece.."We saw friends and relatives die in the rubble, we fled Syria because we no longer had any hope," said Hasan, an engineer from Damascus, who arrived in Italy with his wife Nour and two-year-old son. He is locked in an impenetrable silence," she said. "Even today, he wakes up every night crying and we cannot get him to play with his sister.In an interview with Italian daily La Stampa, the families, who spent their first night in Rome at a Catholic charity, expressed their gratitude to the pontiff for his "gesture of hope".."

All refugees are children of God," the 79-year-old Pope said on the flight back to Rome referring to their religion, adding that though his gesture was "a drop in the ocean", he hoped "the ocean will never be the same again"."In Lesbos, we understood that we were stuck in a place that we could not leave, (we were) in a trap, a prison," he said describing the Pope as "our saviour" for whisking them off the island, where thousands of migrants risk being sent back to Turkey under a new EU-Turkey deportation deal. "Since then (my son) has barely spoken. rubber strip suppliers "But it was overloaded," said Hasan, recalling the pitch black of the sea at night and the waves rocking the vessel.

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