“The pope is not a political figure,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said when a reporter asked him about Pope Leo’s call for respect toward migrants.
“I know he’s covered like one, but they’re not,” he said Thursday during a press conference in Antalya, Turkey, where Rubio met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani. Rubio continued:
But I would caution all of you and everyone not – I understand there’s this temptation to cover the papacy as a political office. It is not a political office. It is a spiritual office, and it is one that – it has social teachings that are aligned with the faith and with the gospel.
But I don’t believe those are incompatible with a national policy that … tries to prevent mass migration, which is not compassionate to people that are being trafficked into our country and is also not compassionate to people in the country who suffer gravely. When a million people come here illegally, if a thousand of them are dangerous criminals, those are a lot of victims, and that’s not fair either, and that’s not compassionate.
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The Pope is based in Rome and is protected by guards, and walls that were built in Roman times. For example, the city walls helped defeat a Muslim invasion in 846, almost 1,200 years before Donald Trump’s election. “I don’t mean this to be snarky, but the Vatican has rules about who can come in and who can stay,” Rubio added. “So every place has that — it’s just what you do to protect your sovereignty.”
Pope Leo has long shown that he recognizes the distinction between the role of idealistic religious leaders and the role of pragmatic, compromising politicians in secular, diverse societies.
Migration “is a huge problem, and it’s a problem worldwide, not only in this country,” then-Cardinal Robert Prevost (before he became Pope Leo XIV) preached in a Catholic Mass, according to an undated video. “There’s got to be a way both to solve the problem, but also treat people with respect.”
These two-sided comments are far more nuanced than the previous pope’s loud support for mass migration into Europe’s increasingly chaotic and violent societies.
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Rubio added:
We are the most compassionate nation in the world. Every single year a million people legally migrate to the United States permanently, permanent residency. No other nation is nearly as compassionate as we are. We’ve been doing it for a long time. But it can’t be 5 million people a year that come, with 4 million illegally. That can’t – that’s just not sustainable and there’s nothing compassionate about it for Americans.
Thousands of migrants and Americans have been killed by the easy migration rules imposed under President Joe Biden. Those rules also shifted vast wealth from ordinary Americans to migrants and investors.
Vice President JD Vance has cited Catholic teachings to explain why politicians are duty-bound to put their fellow nationals ahead of distant migrants:
There is a Christian concept [Ordo amoris, or “Order of love”] that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.
Trump was democratically elected to carry out his lifesaving, pro-prosperity policies and continues to have strong support despite vehement opposition from the investor-backed Democrat party. For example, a church-commissioned poll in July 2024 showed that 43 percent of 1,342 self-identified Catholics said they want less migration, while just 23 percent favor more migration.
