Pope Leo marks America 250 with immigrant plea: 'Receive them with compassion and generosity'

WASHINGTON, DC: Pope Leo XIV urged Americans to “welcome, protect and assist” immigrants in a July 4 message as the country marked 250 years since the Declaration of Independence.

The US-born Leo has sparred with the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown. On Saturday, July 4, he visited a migrant cemetery in Italy and urged Americans to recognize immigrants’ role in the nation’s history.

Pope Leo sends July 4 immigrant message

While Americans marked 250 years since the Declaration of Independence with rallies, parties, and fireworks, Leo traveled to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Saturday, a center of Europe’s migration debate.

As per the CBS report, he prayed at a migrant cemetery, met migrants at the port, and celebrated a solemn Mass for residents and new arrivals.

“At the cemetery, he laid a wreath of yellow and white flowers on graves marked by simple crosses made from splintered shipwreck wood,” the report said.

In a letter sent to Americans for the Fourth of July anniversary, Leo said protecting human life also means “welcoming, protecting and assisting immigrants, whose hopes, sacrifices and contributions have formed part of the history of this country from its very beginning.”

“To receive them with compassion and generosity is not only an act of charity, but also a recognition of the dignity that belongs to every human person,” Leo wrote.

Lampedusa, closer to Africa than mainland Italy, has received hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing by boat from Libya or Tunisia.

Pope Leo honors migrants who died at sea

Leo met migrants before walking alone onto jagged rocks overlooking the sea, where the wind whipped his cassock and blew off his skullcap, the report noted.

“This is a place where gestures speak louder than words,” Leo said. “But for gestures to be human, they need a heart.”

During his homily, the pope praised Lampedusa residents for what he called a “miracle of compassion” and urged Europe to take responsibility for migrants.

“Indeed, before any intellectual consideration or ideological conviction, the encounter with those who lie before us, stripped of everything, calls us to be close to them,” he said.

Leo also described migrants as victims of brutal exploitation, saying thousands had “fallen into the hands of robbers who have taken everything from them, beat them brutally and walked away, leaving them half-dead.”

Pope later meets US ambassador

Later Saturday, Leo visited the residence of the US Ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, an unusual move for a pope.

The US Embassy said Burch gave him a commemorative baseball, an apple pie, and a US World Cup jersey. Leo confirmed he was rooting for the US team, according to the embassy’s post on X.

The two discussed “American efforts to pursue peace, religious freedom, and the need for moral clarity and courage around the world,” the embassy said.

The visit came as the International Organization for Migration has recorded more than 35,000 missing migrants in the Mediterranean since 2014, with the actual death toll believed to be higher because some shipwrecks are never recorded.

Salvatore Sortino, the IOM’s head of mission for Italy and Malta, said fewer arrivals had not produced a corresponding drop in deaths at sea.

“That speaks about the vulnerability that remains,” Sortino said. “So the visit of the pope here, where all this happens, I think is a very important reminder of that element.”