VATICAN CITY (CNS) – When Pope Francis chose the small Italian island of Lampedusa as the destination for his first trip outside Rome after his election, he signaled to the world that migration would be a defining issue of his pontificate.
Standing at an entry point for thousands of migrants seeking refuge in Europe, he lamented what he called the “globalization of indifference” — a society desensitized to the plight of people forced to flee their homes.
Over the course of his 12-year pontificate, which ended with his death April 21, Pope Francis never relented in his appeals to world leaders and ordinary citizens to treat migrants humanely. He frequently condemned policies of mass deportation, called for more welcoming asylum laws and highlighted the dignity of those crossing borders in search of a better life.
The son of Italian immigrants in Argentina, Pope Francis sometimes invoked his own family history when speaking about migration. In his 2015 address to the U.S. Congress – the first by any pope – he urged lawmakers to embrace migrants rather than fear them.
“I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants,” he said, calling for a response to migration that “is always humane, just and fraternal.”
His concern for migrants extended beyond rhetoric and was reflected in powerful gestures as well.
In nearly all of his 47 international trips, the issue of migration played a central role, and in many cases, was the impetus for his visits. In 2016 and 2021, he traveled to Lesbos, Greece, a major gateway for refugees entering Europe. During his 2016 visit, he brought 12 Syrian refugees — three families with six children — who were facing deportation from the island back to Italy with him aboard the papal plane, describing the act as a “purely humanitarian” gesture.
Also in 2016, during the Holy Year of Mercy, he celebrated Mass in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, along the U.S.-Mexico border, drawing attention to the millions who risk their lives to cross it. In 2019, he unveiled the “Angels Unawares” sculpture in St. Peter’s Square, depicting a group of migrants and refugees from various cultures and historical periods, to remind the millions of visitors that come to the Vatican each year of the evangelical challenge of hospitality.
When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, the number of international migrants worldwide stood at 231 million. By 2024 that figure had risen to nearly 281 million. As conflicts, economic instability and climate change fueled displacement across continents, Pope Francis persistently framed migration as a fundamental moral issue that had serious policy implications.
He made that clear in 2014 when he addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Francis, emphasizing that Europe had a moral duty to support the development and stability of migrants’ countries of origin.
Under Pope Francis’ leadership, the Vatican, through the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, backed the 2018 “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,” the first U.N.-negotiated agreement to establish a cooperative approach to global migration. The Holy See played a role in shaping the compact’s emphasis on humanitarian protection, family unity and integration efforts.
And Pope Francis did not shy away from speaking up about migration issues in specific contexts, either. In 2017, he personally appealed to then-U.S. President Donald Trump to reconsider his administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, saying that a “good pro-life person” would not seek to separate children from their parents but would rather defend the family which is “the cradle of life.”
Similarly, in Italy, he consistently spoke out against hardline immigration measures, denouncing efforts to criminalize NGOs that rescued migrants in the Mediterranean.
In February, as Trump’s second administration ramped up anti-immigrant rhetoric and froze programs to assist legal immigration, Pope Francis again addressed the issue, this time in a letter to the U.S. bishops. Referring to ongoing mass deportations, he urged Catholics and people of goodwill not to fall for “narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”
Furthermore, in response to comments by U.S. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, who suggested that love and charity should prioritize fellow citizens over migrants, Pope Francis countered that “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.” Instead, he pointed to the parable of the Good Samaritan, calling for “a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
Within the church, Pope Francis also gave the issue of migration a more central focus in his magisterium.
In his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” he decried the “widespread indifference” to the suffering of refugees forced out of their homes due to environmental degradation.
In the encyclical “Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship,” published in 2020, he forcefully condemned nationalism and xenophobia, stating that the treatment of migrants as “less worthy, less important, less human” by Christians is unacceptable.
In 2022, he canonized St. Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, an Italian who founded the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo to care for migrants, saying during the canonization Mass that refusing to care for migrants “is revolting, it’s sinful, it’s criminal.”
That forceful moral language, sometimes blunt and always unapologetic, was a hallmark of Pope Francis’ pontificate and cemented his legacy as a champion of migrants.
“It needs to be said clearly,” he said during a general audience in August 2024, “there are those who systematically work by all means to drive away migrants, and this, when done knowingly and deliberately, is a grave sin.”
From Lampedusa to Lesbos, from the U.S.-Mexico border to the heart of Africa, he preached that migration was not a passing crisis or a regional concern, but one of the defining moral tests of the modern era.
At his 2013 penitential Mass in Lampedusa, mourning the lives of migrants lost at sea, he prayed: “Let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world, of our own hearts, and of all those who in anonymity make social and economic decisions which open the door to tragic situations like this.”