Nardi, who was travelling with the Pope, showed the large-sized picture to Francis as he was greeting media correspondents during the flight from Rome on Friday.
"He was immediately moved, as soon as I took it out of the envelope," Nardi said, adding silence fell among the aircraft's passengers and Francis had commented: "They keep them in Libyan detention camps, then they throw them to sea".
On Saturday in Marseilles Pope Francis condemned "belligerent nationalisms" and called for a pan-European response to migration to stop the Mediterranean, where thousands have drowned, from becoming "the graveyard of dignity".
Nardi said that the day before travelling with Francis she was putting in order her photo archive, as she normally does before her assignments.
"I saw that picture I had taken in Lampedusa and suddenly felt I had to show it to the Pope," she said.
Persons:
Yara Nardi, Pope Francis the, Pope Francis, Nardi, Pope, Francis, Claudine Nsoe, Marseilles Pope Francis, Giulio Piovaccari, David Holmes
Organizations:
Reuters, Thomson
Locations:
Cameroon, Lampedusa, France, ROME, Marseilles, Rome, North Africa