Pope Leo XIV politely rebuked the many pro-migration advocates who portray him and the Catholic Church as supporters of mass migration and as opponents of deportations.
“No one has said that the United States should have open borders,” the Pope told reporters in an impromptu press conference on Tuesday.
“I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter, ” said the Pope, whose Catholic religion has recognized for 1,600 years that governments have a right to rule on Earth and that moral justice is to be settled in the hereafter.
In contrast, many progressives — like Islamic advocates — insist that their form of justice be imposed on Earth, regardless of the huge civic and pocketbook costs to citizens.
The Pope’s statement comes after the establishment U.S. media touted the pro-migration passages in a November 12 statement by the U.S. Bishops.
But the media also downplayed the statement’s endorsement of citizens’ rights to govern their borders, saying: “We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good.”
The mixed messages from the Church underline the tension within the church’s simultaneous deference to the worldly power of elected governments and its religious advocacy of Christian dignity and rights for humans — including migrants — across the globe. These tensions between the church’s universalist ideals and governments are both useful and long-standing, and are repeatedly recognized by senior clerics and Pope Leo XIV.
For example, in the same press conference where the Pope endorsed national borders, he also urged — but did not try to command — more support for migrants:
I would invite, especially all Catholics, but people of goodwill, to listen carefully to what [the Bishops] said. I think we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.
If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that — there are courts, there’s a system of justice. I think there are a lot of problems in the system. No one has said that the United States should have open borders. I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter.
But when people [illegal migrants] are living good lives — and many of them [do] for 10, 15, 20 years — to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful, to say the least — and there’s been some violence unfortunately — I think that the bishops have been very clear in what they said. I think that I would just invite all people in the United States to listen to them.
As the Church’s spiritual and worldly leader, the Pope zig-zags between rival advocacy groups.
For example, the Pope held a short meeting on November 19 with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has led opposition to law enforcement by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Unsurprisingly, Pritzer used the media to portray the Pope as his ally against ICE, saying the Pope “wanted to hear my views and asked a few questions about what the situation is on the ground right now.”
Pritzker supported President Joe Biden’s easy-migration policies, which killed thousands of migrants and many Americans from 2021 to 2024.
“The U.N. Missing Migrants Project estimates at least 349 people either disappeared or died in Caribbean waters last year, nearly twice as many as the year before,” the Washington Post reported in July 2023, adding:
“That’s the highest toll since the agency began tracking them in 2014 and is probably an undercount, said Edwin Viales, a data and research assistant for the U.N. project. “In the bottom of the Caribbean Sea,” Viales said, “there are thousands of remains of migrants who remain unidentified.”
The Post focused on the Bahamanian coastal patrol’s rescue of 25 survivors from a boat carrying roughly 65 passengers:
Authorities laid the bodies of the [recovered] dead facedown on a tarp and took photos. One of those images reached the cellphone of [Haitian native] Lenise Georges as she sat in a Nassau church pew and listened to Sunday services.
There, on WhatsApp, was the body of her 43-year-old sister, Altanie Ivoy, a mother of three, in a pink zigzag shirt. Georges recognized her back and the shape of her arm, the elbow she’d known since they were children. Next to her, wearing red polka-dot pants, was Ivoy’s 1-year-old daughter Kourtney, who had just begun to say her first words. She was the only child on the boat.
Multiple polls show that many Catholics oppose mass migration, even as they also want to aid poor people..
The church also faces this migration tension in its national territory in the Vatican City, in Rome. In January, the Catholic News Agency reported:
In a decree issued last month by the Holy See, the monetary sanctions and prison sentences for those who violate the strict security regulations of Vatican City have been considerably increased. For example, the Catholic News Agency reported in January:
The document, signed by Cardinal Fernando Vérguez Alzaga, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, provides for monetary fines ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 euros (about $10,200 to $25,700) and prison sentences ranging from one to four years.
…
The decree emphasizes that the penalties can be increased if the crime is committed with firearms, corrosive substances, by a person in disguise, or by several people together. Likewise, if illegal access is made in a vehicle, the penalty can increase by up to two-thirds.
