LAMPEDUSA, Italy ― Pope Leo XIV on Saturday defended the dignity of migrants during a visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa, where the Mediterranean waters beckon as a pathway of hope to a better life in Europe but also have become a graveyard for many who die trying.
Leo’s appearance commemorated a landmark visit to Lampedusa on July 8, 2013, by his predecessor, Pope Francis, who used his first pastoral trip away from Rome to signal the plight of migrants as an increasingly prominent issue for the global Catholic Church.
For Leo, the first U.S.-born pontiff, there was added symbolism in making his own statement about migrants on July Fourth — what Vatican officials described as a “counterpoint” to the migrant crackdown in the United States, which Leo has called “inhuman.”
Leo laid a bouquet of white and yellow flowers at the simply marked graves of migrants drowned at sea, and held an outdoor Mass, where he invoked the parable of the Good Samaritan and sought to inspire a nation, a continent and a world increasingly weary of mass migration.
“The Gospel resounds where peoples meet, people welcome one another, their lives intertwine and different cultures engage in dialogue,” Leo said. “It falls silent, however, when each person makes him or herself an island.”
The pope’s Lampedusa trip on the 250th anniversary of American independence came as the Vatican released a special message from Leo to the U.S., in which he declared that “defending human life also includes welcoming, protecting and assisting immigrants.”
“In every generation, those who have arrived seeking freedom, opportunity and a place to belong have helped to shape the nation’s character,” Leo said. “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.”
Over the years, Lampedusa became a symbol of mass migration into Europe. In the era of Francis’s trip, Italy more broadly but Lampedusa especially rallied to their cause, so much so that the island’s 6,500 residents were collectively nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.
But Leo has arrived in another age — one in which this island is tiring of migrant waves and Italy and European Union countries have taken an ever-harsher approach toward irregular migration, while President Donald Trump also conducts a major crackdown in the United States.
“The logic of reception is getting narrower everywhere,” said Archbishop Alessandro Damiano of Agrigento, which includes Lampedusa. “The logic, today, is rejection.”
Italy, under new E.U. rules backed by the country’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, last month began funneling some migrants who arrive here into “fast track” processing meant to rapidly weed out and deport unsuccessful asylum petitioners.
Controversial deals with Libya and Tunisia — countries with brutal human rights records — have intensified aggressive operations to prevent migrants from ever leaving the African coast, sparking a sharp decline in arrivals.
Meanwhile, increased Italian legal restrictions on nongovernmental aid and advocacy organizations have reduced private rescue operations of migrant boats at sea.
On the azure shores and tourist-trekked streets of Lampedusa, about 100 miles from the African shore — far closer to Tunisia than to the Italian mainland — migrants for years mingled with locals, using a don’t-ask, don’t-tell “hole” in a fence of a holding center to come and go.
That changed during the 2020 pandemic, residents say. Migrants now arrive at a militarized Favaloro Pier, rechristened Saturday by Leo as the “Pope Francis Pier,” and are taken to a camp for fingerprinting and processing. Most are transported off the island within 48 hours.
Holding the hand of a migrant child, Leo on Saturday approached the “Door to Europe,” a ceramic monument to the perseverance of migrants that faces Africa. On a nearby rocky outcrop on a windy day, the pope’s white skullcap blew off his head as he meditated on the waters.
During an outdoor Mass, Leo drew attention to policies separating tourists, locals and migrants. “It then seems as though an invisible wall has to be erected between the sea of shipwrecked migrants and the vacationers,” Leo said Saturday. “Have the courage to think differently.”
The pope also said: “We must choose whether to fuel the mentality of force — even if only through indifference, cynicism, lies or hatred — or to preserve the mindset of peace with truth, moderation, closeness and care.”
Francesca Saccomandi, field coordinator of Mediterranean Hope, a migrant aid charity run by evangelical churches, said the toilets at the pier have not worked for some time, and that migrants are essentially being corralled from the docks to a closed holding center.
“It’s not possible for the people to even clean their hands or to flush the toilet when they first arrive,” Saccomandi said.
She added: “What I really hope is that the visit of the Pope can shed a light on this situation, because what we are doing is not welcoming people. We are controlling them. And we are funding the people who push them back, who torture them in Tunisia and Libya. And we are [putting in place] stricter procedures for them in order to make it more difficult for them to come.”
Giusi Nicolini, Lampedusa’s mayor from 2012 to 2017 who became a face of migrant solidarity here and was greeted by President Barack Obama at the White House, lamented what she called a shift away from welcoming attitudes that once prevailed.
“It pains me,” Nicolini said. “But is it not just Lampedusa. The winds have changed.”
“The Lampedusans now will welcome the pope … but they are also convinced they’ve done their duty, and that perhaps it would also be fair if this weight no longer fell on their shoulders,” she added.
The new deterrents seem to be working. Through late June, irregular arrivals in Italy had fallen 53 percent compared to last year, to 13,511, although recorded deaths rose by 59 percent, to 863 from 544, largely due to bad weather and fewer, but more overcrowded, boats.
The new fast-track system is meant to weed out economic migrants, from countries like Bangladesh and North African nations, who have very low chances of winning asylum.
A day before the pope arrived, the migrant “hot spot” — or holding center — on Lampedusa contained roughly 120 migrants, far fewer than the average in peak years, and almost all from countries with relatively high rates of asylum approval, including Sudan and Eritrea.
On Lampedusa, a measure of fatigue has built for years. The deputy mayor decried migrant arrivals during a short-lived surge in 2023 as “an invasion.” In 2017, a previous mayor, Salvatore Martello, penned an open letter claiming migrants were breaking laws, harassing women and getting drunk.
Filippo Mannino, the current center-right mayor, defended the new rules and tougher national policies. The point, Mannino said, is to encourage legal pathways — an approach Leo has also endorsed.
“I don’t call it an invasion because an invasion is like saying, the barbarians want to conquer a territory,” he said. “But it is logical that this island could not manage all of this alone. It is logical that strong help was needed, first and foremost from the national government.”
Inspired by Francis, Italy’s then-center-left government in 2013 undertook a massive government effort — Mare Nostrum, Our Sea — that saw military vessels actively search out migrant boats and safely bring ashore some 150,000 people, mostly from Africa and the Middle East.
Locals opened their homes to the families of dead migrants coming to collect remains and aided in relief and rescue efforts.
Italians remain more tolerant of migrants than some European countries — particularly in Scandinavia, where souring public opinion has been accompanied by increasingly harsh measures.
Meloni has also sought to balance efforts to limit irregular migration by pledging hundreds of thousands of legal work visas for industries such as elderly care and agriculture that rely on overseas workers.
But some on the island, including Salvatore Cappello, 64, a restaurant and bar owner, have found a new political home in a rising movement in Italy led by an ultraconservative former army general, Roberto Vannacci, who insists that Meloni and her allies are not tough enough.
A member of the European Parliament who broke with Italy’s ultraconservative League Party in February, Vannacci has built a political brand by opposing support for Ukraine and LGBTQ+ rights.
He has also adopted an overtly anti-migrant tone, calling for “remigration,” a concept popularized by the Austrian far right, and repeated by Trump, that envisions mass expulsions of migrants as well as naturalized citizens deemed resistant to assimilation.
“People have gotten sick of it,” Capello said of the migrant waves. “We are a place of reception, but we also suffer. They are giving too much attention to [migrants] when they should be dealing with lack of proper health care and high prices for the residents of Lampedusa.”
In just four months, Vannacci’s new party has climbed to nearly 6 percent in opinion polls, potentially making him a kingmaker in next year’s national election, when Meloni may be forced to reach a deal with him to win a second term.
‘It is the right for each population to defend its own culture and civilization,” Vannacci said in an interview with The Washington Post. “You cannot accept that different foreign groups are growing more than a certain percentage, especially if they are coming from a noncompatible culture in your country.”
Leo on Saturday echoed the calls by Francis for migrant dignity and reception, but also stressed that they should integrate and rethink irregular trips with traffickers. Francis often voiced similar reasoning, but Leo’s words have been interpreted as more nuanced.
“Europe is capable of addressing the crisis in a comprehensive manner, integrating immediate relief efforts into a long-term strategic plan capable of receiving, protecting, supporting and integrating migrants,” Leo said, “while at the same time assisting developing countries so that no one is forced to emigrate.”
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