Pope Francis’ first official trip set the tone for the upcoming one shortly after he took the helm of the Catholic Church in 2013.
He chose to visit Italy’s small island of Lampedusa, one of the main entrances to immigration through the Mediterranean Sea. So he condemned what he called “the globalization of indifference” in his harsh message to the world.
“We’ve become accustomed to the pain of others. It doesn’t affect us. It’s not our business,” the Pope said.
Born in 1936 by Jorge Mario Bergolio, he also came from an immigrant family who left Italy for Argentina.
Through his papal authority, Pope Francis never relented in appeal to world leaders and ordinary citizens to treat immigrants with humanity.
During his 2023 visit to the city of Marseille, France, he said that migration was not a short-term emergency but a “reality of our time.”
He urged Europe to respond with “wise foresight” and solidarity against the surge in arrivals, and the need for a pan-European response was one of his most repeated pleas.
The moral obligation of rescue and welcoming
Pope Francis consistently emphasized moral orders to save at-risk immigrants, particularly those that cross the Mediterranean.
He described efforts to stop rescue operations as “gestures of hatred,” and argued that “we must rescue people who are at risk of drowning when abandoned by the waves.”
Speaking at a conference of bishops and youths in Mediterranean countries, the Pope said in Marseille that “people who risk their lives at sea will not invade.”
“There is a cry of pain that resonates more than anything, changing the cradle of civilization, “Mortum of the Mares” (Latin Sea of Death), the Mediterranean Sea, “Our Sea of Latin”,” he said.
The Mediterranean has become one of the world’s largest immigrant tombs since 2014, with more than 30,000 deaths, according to the International Immigration Agency’s Missing Persons Project.
As pressure surged to crack down on illegal migration in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, Pope Francis pleaded to end the practice of returning people rescued at sea to Libya and other unsafe countries that suffer from “inhuman violence.”
He called Libyan detention facilities “a true concentration camp.”
“Welcome, protect, promote and integrate.”
For the Pope, welcome meant providing a broader option for migrants and refugees to enter their destination country safely and legally.
Pope Francis called for the opening of humanitarian corridors, particularly for vulnerable refugees, and advocated the need for more legitimate entrances, particularly for fleeing wars, hunger and poverty.
He also asked the state to increase and simplify the process of humanitarian visas and family unification.
The Pope opposed the collective and arbitrary banishment of migrants and refugees, especially in places where people were returned to countries where they could not guarantee their fundamental rights.
He has called on more countries to adopt private and community sponsored programs and to grant special temporary visas to those fleeing conflict in their neighbouring countries.
Pope and Trump
“People who only think about building walls are not Christians wherever they are,” Pope Francis said in 2016 during a trip to Mexico.
At the time, Donald Trump was a presidential candidate and was campaigning to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.
By the end of Trump’s first term in 2021, the 724-kilometer wall was completed, replacing the old structures built primarily between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.
The current Trump administration’s deportation policy was one of the Pope’s final battles.
Joining the campaign trajectory and his second presidency, Trump repeatedly poses the threat of deporting thousands of migrants who illegally entered the United States.
Some of these efforts have been met with legal challenges, and in early April a federal judge said the administration may have acted lightly emptying the courts, ignoring an order not to wield planes carrying immigrants bound to El Salvador.
On Easter Sunday, the day before his death, Pope Francis met with US Vice President J.D. Vance. After Pope Francis repeatedly criticised the US administration’s strict immigration policies, the conference was seen as a settlement between the Trump administration and the Vatican.
Pope Francis said in January that if Trump’s massive deportation plan was implemented, it would be “disgrace.”
