Pope Leo XIV, who has sparred with the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, spent the Fourth of July on Saturday within the epicenter of Europe’s migration debate to honor the tens of 1000’s of people that have died making an attempt to succeed in Europe to search out freedom and prosperity.
Whereas america marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with rallies, events and fireworks, the U.S.-born pope traveled to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa to hope at a migrant cemetery and rejoice a solemn Mass for the island’s residents and latest arrivals.
In a while Saturday, he received into the July Fourth spirit with a go to to the residence of the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, a rarity for popes who normally do not name on ambassadors. The U.S. Embassy stated Burch gave Leo a commemorative baseball, an apple pie and a U.S. World Cup jersey.
Leo confirmed he was rooting for the U.S. workforce, the Embassy wrote on X, including that the 2 mentioned “American efforts to pursue peace, non secular freedom and the necessity for ethical readability and braveness all over the world.”
Pool Picture/Ciro Fusco, By way of AP
A treeless strip of rock 5.6 miles lengthy, Lampedusa is nearer to Africa than the Italian mainland and is the principle port of entry into Europe for tons of of 1000’s of migrants who crossed by boat from Libya or Tunisia, typically smuggled by human traffickers.
Leo met with some migrants on the port after which walked alone onto the jagged jetty rocks, the wind whipping his cassock and blowing his zucchetto skullcap off as he seemed out to the ocean. He then blessed a plaque dedicating the dock to Pope Francis, who visited in 2013, earlier than celebrating Mass on land.
“This can be a place the place gestures communicate louder than phrases,” Leo stated. “However for gestures to be human, they want a coronary heart.”
In making the go to on this explicit Saturday, Leo was sending a powerfully symbolic message to the U.S. and Europe of the Christian obligation to uphold the dignity of each human being, migrants and essentially the most susceptible particularly, whereas reminding the U.S. that it was based by immigrants.
AP Picture/Alessandra Tarantino 
In a letter despatched to Individuals on the Fourth of July anniversary, Leo insisted that defending the unborn and all human life additionally means “welcoming, defending and aiding immigrants, whose hopes, sacrifices and contribution have shaped a part of the historical past of this nation from its very starting.”
“To obtain them with compassion and generosity is just not solely an act of charity, but additionally a recognition of the dignity that belongs to each human particular person,” Leo wrote.
A tiny island turns into Floor Zero for European migration debate
Lately, Lampedusa has turn out to be Floor Zero of Europe’s migration debate because the continent struggles to police its borders whereas honoring its authorized obligations to welcome refugees fleeing battle, local weather change and poverty.
In his homily, Leo thanked the residents of Lampedusa for the “miracle of compassion” they’ve proven in welcoming migrants and urged Europe to rise to the problem of the second and assume its accountability.
“Certainly, earlier than any mental consideration or ideological conviction, the encounter with those that lie earlier than us, stripped of all the things, calls us to be near them,” Leo stated, carrying vestments adorned with photos of waves.
Preaching from “this far-flung nook of Europe on the Mediterranean Sea,” Leo urged European leaders to handle the migration phenomenon in a complete means, integrating rapid aid with a long-term methods to obtain, shield, help and combine migrants whereas growing their dwelling nations so nobody is pressured emigrate.
“Right here you have got seen not only one, however 1000’s of human beings fallen into the palms of robbers who’ve taken all the things from them, beat them brutally and walked away, leaving them half-dead,” he stated.
Others have died making the voyage, he stated, “but we really feel their presence, which challenges us a minimum of that of those that have landed in want of consideration and assist.”
The variety of migrants arriving in Italy thus far this 12 months is considerably decrease than lately, with the Inside Ministry reporting 14,464 arrivals as of Friday in contrast with 30,598 in the identical interval final 12 months and 26,202 in 2024.
On the similar time, the Worldwide Group of Migration has recorded greater than 35,000 lacking migrants within the Mediterranean since 2014, although the precise variety of lifeless is believed to be far increased given the untold variety of “invisible” shipwrecks which might be by no means recorded.
Leo has strongly emphasised the necessity to uphold the dignity of migrants, particularly amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation program in his native Chicago. However he has additionally directed his message to Europe’s Christian leaders.
Final month, Leo visited one other European migration scorching spot, in Spain’s Canary Islands, to disgrace leaders who flip migrants away indifferently whereas additionally warning folks smugglers they are going to face God’s wrath for exploiting the desperation of migrants.
Leo honors the dignity of the lifeless and remembers Francis
After arriving in Lampedusa by aircraft, Leo paid homage to the lifeless on the island’s migrant cemetery, laying a wreath of yellow and white flowers on their graves, marked by easy crosses constituted of the splintered wooden of shipwrecked boats.
The gestures ship a “robust message” of solidarity, stated Tareke Brhane, a migrant from Eritrea and president of the Oct. 3 Committee, a nonprofit based by kinfolk of victims of a 2013 shipwreck in Lampedusa that left 368 folks lifeless.
“It’s a robust signal for our battle with Italy and with Europe with a view to register the deaths, as a result of as of immediately we nonetheless would not have a registry (of these deceased),” he advised The Related Press.
Leo’s go to each honors the lifeless and “offers a message to the kinfolk, so a lot of them nonetheless ready and struggling,” he stated.
Together with his go to, Leo adopted within the footsteps of Francis, who made the plight of migrants and refugees a precedence of his hold forth. For the Catholic Church, welcoming and accompanying folks fleeing hardship is a part of the Gospel-mandated name to “welcome the stranger.”
Francis traveled to Lampedusa in July 2013, on his first journey outdoors Rome after his election. He tossed a wreath into the ocean in reminiscence of migrants who had died and denounced the “globalization of indifference” that the world reveals migrants.
Salvatore Sortino, the IOM’s head of mission for Italy and Malta, stated regardless of the lower in arrivals, the variety of lifeless had elevated proportionally, “within the sense that the diminishing numbers of arrivals hasn’t resulted in a decrease variety of deaths at sea.”
“That speaks concerning the vulnerability that is still,” he stated. “So the go to of the pope right here, the place all this occurs, I believe is a vital reminder of that component.”
