President Trump is set to mark America’s 250th anniversary today with a grand celebration in Washington, DC, that includes a military parade and a fireworks display that organizers say will break world records. Another American world leader, however, has chosen to spend Independence Day in a completely different way.
This morning, Pope Leo XIV visited the island of Lampedusa in the southern Mediterranean Sea, where he laid flowers on the graves of migrants who died trying to reach Europe. Leo compared them to the man who fell among thieves in the Gospel parable of the Good Samaritan. “Here you have seen not just one but thousands of human beings have fallen into the hands of bandits who have taken everything from them, beaten them brutally, and left, leaving them half dead,” the pope said. He asked his listeners to act like the benefactor of the Bible: “We become neighbors by acting like neighbors.”
The first American-born pope did not mention his native land in his speech. But given the importance of the date, and his frequent criticism of Trump’s immigration policies, Leo’s message to America was impossible to miss.
Yesterday, the pope issued a letter marking half a century in which he urged the United States to live up to its core values, particularly in its treatment of immigrants. He called on the country to protect “human life from its beginning at conception to natural death,” which must include “welcoming, protecting and helping immigrants, whose hope, sacrifice and contribution have been part of the history of this country since its beginning.”
In his speech broadcast live from the Vatican, Leo also addressed the United States yesterday while receiving the Medal of Freedom from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. He praised America’s long history of opening “its doors to successive waves of immigrants, enabling them and their children to play their part in shaping the nation’s future.”
Based on his criticism of the Trump administration, Leo clearly believes that the United States is failing to reach this level today. The pope has made clear his opposition to Trump’s immigration policies, which he denounced last year as “barbaric” and “grossly dishonorable.” In November, he supported the US bishops when they denounced the government’s campaign of “arbitrary mass displacement.”
Trump personally has not pushed back against Leo’s criticism; His extraordinary attacks on the pope earlier this year focused on the pope’s opposition to the Iran war. Instead, the administration’s main voice in the immigration debate with the Church has been Vice President Vance.
In a new memoir about his conversion to Catholicism, Vance dismissed some of the Vatican’s statements on immigration as “common principles” and “common voices.” Earlier this week, the vice president told Fox News that he hopes Catholic leaders have learned from the Trump administration that “it’s not just about the dignity of the immigrant, but also about the dignity of the native-born factory worker whose wages are being destroyed. It’s about the dignity of a child who can be trafficked for sex with a member of a group when you have open borders.”
Today’s visit to Lampedusa seems to confirm that defending the dignity of migrants will continue to be a priority, the same as it was for his predecessor Pope Francis. In 2013, the newly elected Francis chose to make his first trip outside of Rome to then-unknown Lampedusa after hearing about migrants who died when their boat capsized off its shores. There, Francis was disgusted by the “globalization of indifference” expressed by the migrant crisis.
Francis went on to produce hundreds of pages of writings and speeches on the subject. In fact, in one of his last official acts—less than three months before his death last year—he sent an open letter to American bishops urging them to oppose the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies.
Leo’s own trip to Lampedusa, in his reserved and traditional style, was less dramatic than Francis’s. While the Argentine papal arrived at the island’s main port on an Italian Coast Guard ship, accompanied by dozens of fishing boats, Leo arrived by car. Francis celebrated Mass using an altar made out of a small fishing boat, but Leo chose a more casual setting.
During his visit, Leo said that the migrants who died were victims of economic inequality, political corruption, “indifference to the common good,” and the failure of countries in the region to coordinate their immigration policies. Although Leo’s main focus on Lampedusa was defending immigrants – a left-wing cause in the American political context – his messages to America reflected two right-wing concerns: protecting religious freedom and the right to life. He mentioned both as basic principles in the biblical understanding of man.
This political balance is characteristic of Leo, who has tried to reassure conservatives and progressives in the Catholic Church that he listens to both sides. The strategy reflects the importance he places on unity, as summed up in his papal motto, In that one: “In One”—that is, Christ—”we are one.”
In his speech yesterday, Leo made it clear that he sees racism in America and the wider world as a serious problem. Giving the American motto One of manyLeo told the gathering in Philadelphia: “In order for a nation to prosper, it must have true unity; it must be connected not only to projects that deal with temporary things, but to values that do not fade with the passage of time.” As unlikely as the Founders could have seen it, one of the staunchest defenders of that ideal today is an American in the Vatican.
