Pope Francis often stood up for immigrants. Here are five ways
Mass deportation? Crackdown on migration? Pope Francis had something to say about that.
The pope often sparred with political leaders over their treatment of immigrants; it was a position that put him at odds with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Francis, spiritual leader to nearly 1.4 billion baptized Catholics worldwide, had spent the past dozen years of his papacy highlighting the struggles of immigrants and asking the faithful to defend them.
His tenure coincided with a massive increase in displaced people worldwide. The United Nations estimates that some 120 million people have been forced to leave their homes in recent years.
This rise in migration has also led to a backlash against migrants in destination countries, including the United States.
Here are five times Francis defended migrants:
1. A papal schooling on 'Christian love'
Vance said in an interview with FOX News in February that, when it comes to immigration, Americans should care for their own before worrying about others. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, cited a teaching known as "ordo amoris."
“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,” Vance said.
Francis responded with the papal equivalent of a smackdown: He wrote a public letter to U.S.-based bishops that appeared to correct the vice president's interpretation.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” he wrote in the February letter.
2. A 'grave sin' to turn away migrants
After a decade of encouraging Catholic followers to have compassion for migrants, Francis declared turning away migrants is "a grave sin."
Speaking to the public during a weekly "general audience" in St. Peter's Square in August 2024, at a time when Trump was running for president, Francis invoked "the people who – even at this moment – are crossing seas and deserts to reach a land where they can live in peace and security."
"It needs to be said clearly: There are those who systematically work by all means to drive away migrants, and this, when done knowingly and deliberately, is a grave sin," he said.
3. Migrant caravans 'in search of freedom'
In December 2022 during a celebration of the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the pope defended the migrant caravans that were then headed, unsuccessfully, for the United States.
He invoked the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint, as the protective mother figure "in the midst of the caravans that come in search of freedom, traveling northward," he said.
4. Building walls instead of bridges
During his first presidential race, in 2016, then-candidate Trump called for a crackdown on immigration and a "big, beautiful wall" at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Francis said at the time that a person who thinks only of building walls and not bridges "is not Christian."
5. Flowers for a watery grave
Francis took his first trip outside the Vatican as pope to a tiny Italian island called Lampedusa, in 2013. There, he tossed a wreath of flowers into the Mediterranean Sea, which had become a watery grave for hundreds of North African migrants trying to reach a better life in Europe.
"I felt I should go," he later told Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli. "The news of the migrants that died, engulfed in the sea, touched and moved me – children, women, young men … a heart-breaking tragedy.”
Lauren Villagran can be reached at lvillagran@usatoday.com.