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 and sisters calling on our love in their need. And here was a practical demonstration of the welcome that love inspires and for which it will not tolerate delay until the right people are there to be welcomed.
In Australia we do things rather differently. Here people seeking protection are long accustomed to languish in detention on the mainland, on Christmas Island, on Nauru and on Manus Island. They go unvisited by any angel of mercy. No judgment is spoken on the political parties that imprison them.
The two leaders of our political parties travel together, not on a path of compassion and welcome but, united by their political antipathy, on a path of ever more harsh rejection.
Francis took one day to bring to his country 12 people seeking protection. Our leaders have taken more than a year to bring less than 200. He took unhesitatingly people who were ill and people who were Muslims. We have been promised that the beliefs and health of any people whom we take will be carefully screened and taken into account before they are allowed into Australia.
In Europe, Francis will be praised for his compassion and criticised for his unrealistic attitudes to the 'refugee problem'. In Australia our leaders will be praised both for the brutal realism of their solution to the 'refugee problem' and for their lack of compassion.
Many Australians, of course, will praise Francis for refusing to make vulnerable people into problems, and for crossing over to befriend them. But how many of us will walk his brave path?
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.