''I don't think it's a very Christian thing to come in by the back door rather than the front door,'' he has said. ''I think the people we accept should be coming the right way and not the wrong way.

''If you pay a people smuggler, if you jump the queue, if you take yourself and your family on a leaky boat, that's doing the wrong thing, not the right thing, and we shouldn't encourage it.''

Francis, the bishop of Rome, doesn't have quite the same approach. Yet Italy, the nation surrounding the Vatican State, has very serious border and boat people problems, in a way Australia doesn't. In an average year, the number of unwanted people, mostly Africans, arriving by boat is 10 times that of Australia. That's on top of those slipping in by air or road. About 10 per cent of boat people trying to get to Italy across the Mediterranean Sea drown - at least 20,000 so far.

This week the Pope visited Lampedusa, an island off Italy being used as the first port of call for tens of thousands of Africans who have tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea for Europe. A good many are refugees from the people-movement and civil-war catastrophes of Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Chad and any number of other troubled states. But many are what Bob Carr, in the latest attempted legitimisation of his fairly permanent dislike of any increase whatever to the Australian population, as economic refugees: people looking for a happier, safer and more prosperous life for themselves and their families.

Pope Francis does not seem to make the distinction between this aspiration and flight from terror, war, famine and revolution that so many Australia politicians do. And while the Pope plainly dislikes those who profit from the exploitation of human misery, one gathers that he does so only in the sense of lumping people smugglers with cosmetic surgeons, or the high end of the bar.

The 200,000 arrivals over the past 10 years - 166 arrived in a boat while the Pope was there - are not at all officially welcome. In Italy, however, politicians do not grandstand at the domestic level about whether this or that approach is unwittingly sending out the welcome mat, or vie with each other about how, by being as cruel as possible to desperate refugees, we will be doing them an ultimate kindness.

Indeed, unable by virtue of geography to do much about the supply side of refugees, Italy is trying to socialise the problem through Europe. It has taken to bribing boat people to move quickly through Italy into neighbouring countries.

At Lampedusa, the Pope said mass, and asked the largely Muslim boat people for forgiveness for global indifference to their plight. He spoke of reading of people drowning on boats that ''instead of being a way of hope, was a way of death''.

'''When, a few weeks ago, I heard the news - which unfortunately has been repeated so many times - the thought always returns as a thorn in the heart that brings suffering. And then I felt that I ought to come here today to pray, to make a gesture of closeness, but also to reawaken our consciences so that what happened would not be repeated.

''But first I want to say a word of sincere gratitude and encouragement to you, the [permanent] residents of Lampedusa and Linosa, to the associations, to the volunteers and to the security forces that have shown and continue to show attention to persons on their voyage towards something better. I give a thought, too, to the dear Muslim immigrants that are beginning the fast of Ramadan, with best wishes for abundant spiritual fruits. The church is near to you in the search for a more dignified life for yourselves and for your families.

''This morning, I want to provoke everyone's conscience, pushing us to reflect and to change certain attitudes in concrete ways.

''So many of us, even including myself, are disoriented, we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live, we don't care, we don't protect that which God has created for all, and we are unable to care for one another.

''And when this disorientation assumes worldwide dimensions, we arrive at tragedies like the one we have seen. 'Where is your brother? The voice of his blood cries even to me,' God says.

''This is not a question addressed to others: it is a question addressed to me, to you, to each one of us.

''These our brothers and sisters seek to leave difficult situations in order to find a little serenity and peace, they seek a better place for themselves and for their families - but they found death.

''How many times do those who seek this not find understanding, do not find welcome, do not find solidarity. Their voices rise up even to God.

''I recently heard one of these brothers. Before arriving here, he had passed through the hands of traffickers, those who exploit the poverty of others; these people for whom the poverty of others is a source of income. What they have suffered! And some have been unable to arrive!

'''Where is your brother? Who is responsible for this blood?'

''In Spanish literature, there is a play by Lope de Vega that tells how the inhabitants of the city of Fuenteovejuna killed the governor because he was a tyrant, and did it in such a way that no one knew who had carried out the execution. And when the judge of the king asked 'Who killed the governor?' they all responded, 'Fuenteovejuna, sir.' All and no one!

''Even today this question comes with force: Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters? No one! We all respond this way: not me, it has nothing to do with me, there are others, certainly not me.

''But God asks each one of us: 'Where is the blood of your brother that cries out to me?'

''Today no one in the world feels responsible for this; we have lost the sense of fraternal responsibility; we have fallen into the hypocritical attitude of the priest and of the servant of the altar that Jesus speaks about in the parable of the Good Samaritan: We look upon the brother half dead by the roadside, perhaps we think 'poor guy,' and we continue on our way, it's none of our business; and we feel fine with this.

''We feel at peace with this, we feel fine! The culture of wellbeing, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference to others, that brings even the globalisation of indifference.

''In this world of globalisation we have fallen into a globalisation of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn't concern us, it's none of our business. The figure of the Unnamed of Manzoni returns. The globalisation of indifference makes us all 'unnamed,' leaders without names and without faces.

'''Adam, where are you? Where is your brother?' These are the two questions that God puts at the beginning of the story of humanity, and He also addresses to the men and women of our time, even to us.

But I want to set before us a third question: Who among us has wept for these things, and things like this?

''Who has wept for the deaths of these brothers and sisters? Who has wept for the people who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who wanted something to support their families?

''We are a society that has forgotten the experience of weeping, of 'suffering with': the globalisation of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep.

''Let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty in the world, in ourselves, and even in those who anonymously make socio-economic decisions that open the way to tragedies like this.

''O Lord, we ask forgiveness for the indifference towards so many brothers and sisters, we ask forgiveness for those who are pleased with themselves, who are closed in on their own wellbeing in a way that leads to the anaesthesia of the heart, we ask you, Father, for forgiveness for those who with their decisions at the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies.''

Inter alia, of course, he was asking God to forgive most of Australia's politicians, including the present, the would-be and the recently departed prime ministers - all of whom have been playing politics for domestic advantage, rather than with compassion for human lives. The anaesthetisation of the heart may differ but none have led in providing refuge and safety to boat people.

Instead, their policy has been guided by shock jocks and xenophobes, at best trying, behind the scenes, to do a semblance of the right thing, while pandering to, and sometimes inciting, hatred, racism and xenophobia.

The bishop of Rome is, of course, on matters such as this no more than an ordinary citizen of the world. He was not speaking ex cathedra.

But he is not the only spiritual leader saying such things - and being ignored by most of Australia's politicians. Many Australian Catholic bishops have said much the same, repeatedly, in messages from pulpits. So have any number of Anglican bishops - perhaps most loudly the soon-to-retire Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, and any number of leaders of the Uniting Church. So also have leaders of Jewish congregations - representatives of a people who died in their millions last century while the world rationed its compassion to the thousands.

Such unanimity, indeed, at least among the traditional Christian faiths, that one might be entitled to ask whether traditional Christians can believe anything much different. Most of the mainstream Australian politicians grandstanding on the subject - such as Kevin Rudd, Chris Bowen and Tony Burke, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison or Phillip Ruddock, actually parade themselves as self-conscious Christians. A good many Christians must wonder - as I often do - how, if they really are Christians, they can sleep comfortably in bed at night.

One can admit, easily enough, that the practical problems faced by statesmen are never as simple as they seem to a Pope, or a bishop, or a moderator-general. One can insist that no country is obliged to completely open its gates to anyone who wants to come, and that there must be some way to control who comes here and on what terms. One can add, defensively, that trying to discourage people from risking their lives in the open water is in the interests of those people themselves - assuming they would eventually find refuge in Australia, or somewhere quite safe, if only they waited patiently in a queue in Indonesia, Malaysia, or perhaps Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Jordan, the Lebanon, the Sudan, Eritrea or wherever. In a queue, that is, that simply does not exist.