Answering a question from America's Vatican correspondent, Pope Francis indicated he has not spoken directly to President Putin since the war started.

Francis has long desired to visit Malta where, according to the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul was shipwrecked in 60 A.D. while en route to Rome, where he had asked to be judged.

“The people who come are not dead in a technical sense, but they have lost their lives. And they don’t have a new one yet, so they are terribly beaten, and terribly vulnerable.”

Sister Lucía departed from Manresa at 6 a.m. on March 4 and arrived in Romania the following evening. On the morning of March 6, she set out on the return journey to Spain, bringing six refugees with her.

Two million people have already fled Ukraine, many to European nations that resisted accepting refugees from the Middle East. Will this new crisis force a reckoning on the treatment of all displaced persons?

“Pope Francis has said to reach out to the margins and help those who are in need, the refugees, the displaced. And we have a retreat center that has lots of space.”