Pope Francis is giving shelter to a Melkite Greek Catholic refugee family from the Syrian capital Damascus in a Vatican apartment close to St. Peter's basilica, it was revealed Friday afternoon.

According to the Vatican, the family arrived in Italy on Sept. 6, the day the Pope called on every parish in Europe to house at least one family of refugees. The family, consisting of a father, mother and two children, are to remain anonymous until Italian authorities have ruled on their asylum request.

On Saturday morning, the family visited the Pope's residence at the Casa Santa Marta to personally thank the Holy Father for letting them stay in St. Anne's parish in the Vatican. They also wished him well on his trip to Cuba and the United States. The Pope then left for Rome's Fiumicino airport.

The Pope's appeal came in response to a migration crisis in parts of Europe, many of whose borders have been overwhelmed by thousands of asylum seekers fleeing war-torn Syria. 

Francis said "every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe” should try to house a family, saying it would be a "concrete gesture" ahead of a Jubilee Year of Mercy starting in December.

Faced with such a “tragedy”, the Pope said in his Angelus address last week that the Gospel “calls on us and asks us to be the neighbor of the smallest and the most abandoned, to give them concrete hope.”

Drawing on the Gospel passage in which Jesus healed a deaf and mute man, the Pope said, "We have been healed of the deafness of selfishness and the silence of retreating into ourselves. The closed couple, the closed family, the closed group, the closed parish, the closed country, that comes from us, it has nothing to do with God."

In its Friday statement, the Vatican said according to law, for the first six months following the request for asylum, those seeking international protection cannot work and during this time they will be helped and accompanied by the Vatican’s Parish of Santa Anna. 

The Vatican says it can’t yet provide any information about a second refugee family that is expected to be housed soon by the Vatican’s other parish, that of St. Peter’s. 

Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the University of Notre Dame's Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, said the Pope's actions are "consistent" with his messages. "Biblical exhortations to welcome the stranger and shelter the needy are not abstract ideals that Christians can safely ignore; they are concrete demands Jesus has made and continues to make of all of us," Sprows Cummings said. "In leading by example, Francis is reminding the faithful, yet again, that small steps matter, even when dealing with seemingly overwhelming problems."

In an interview with a radio station in Portugal this week, the Holy Father acknowledged the danger of Islamist terrorists using the refugee situation to enter Europe.

“There is a danger of infiltration; this is true,” he said. Obliquely referring to the Islamic State (ISIS), he pointed out that just 300 miles from the coast of Sicily is “an incredibly cruel terrorist group.”

For this reason, he focused his appeal on rescuing families. “A family gives more guarantees of security and containment, so as to avoid infiltrations of another kind,” he said.

ISIS and other Islamist groups have been fighting the Syrian regime since 2011, resulting in thousands of casualties. In February, ISIS leaders threatened to overwhelm Europe with refugees in a bid to infiltrate the West.