Pope Leo made one of his clearest public interventions yet on immigration policy, telling journalists outside the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo that defending the dignity of migrants should never be confused with advocating for open borders.
His remarks, delivered spontaneously in response to questions from journalists the evening of Nov. 18, came after questions about the ongoing immigration debate in the U.S. and the recent pastoral message released by the U.S. bishops.
The Pope praised the bishops’ moral leadership while simultaneously drawing a clear line: affirming the rule of law and the legitimate authority of governments is not contrary to Catholic teaching.
“I appreciate very much what the [U.S.] bishops have said [about immigration],” he said. “I would like to invite especially all Catholics and also people of good will to listen carefully to what they have said. I believe we must seek ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.”
He then clarified: “If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts. There is 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.”
Pope Leo went on to make an appeal for long-residing immigrant families who do not engage in criminal activity: “When people are living good lives, and many of them for 10, 15, 20 years, to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful to say the least, and there has been some violence unfortunately… I think that the Bishops have been very clear in what they said, and I think that I would just invite all people in the United States to listen to them.”
His brief remarks to reporters amounted to a concise restatement of Catholic teaching on questions of immigration and border enforcement, as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 2241).
The Catechism states that countries have the right to secure their borders, that immigrants must be treated justly and humanely, and that immigrants must respect the laws and culture of their adoptive country.
Pope Leo’s comments also align with arguments recently made by CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt. In a Nov. 17 essay published at First Things, Reinhardt lauded the U.S. bishops’ recent message on migration for its expressions of solidarity with vulnerable migrants.
“The American bishops are right to be troubled by ‘a climate of fear,’ by the plight of parents afraid to take their children to school, and by the often harsh, sometimes dehumanizing conditions in detention centers,” she wrote. “These are realities Christians must not look away from.”
She then presented her organization’s recent report on the topic, titled “Immigration Enforcement and the Christian Conscience,” as a guide for those who wish to more thoroughly address the border debate from a Catholic perspective. The document “raises the other unavoidable dimension of the problem,” she wrote: “the federal government’s failure over decades to maintain a coherent, enforceable immigration system.”
“This is not a peripheral concern. As we argue, it is precisely the collapse of lawful order that has created the conditions in which exploitation flourishes, cartels thrive, and millions of migrants are pushed into a shadow-world without legal recourse or clear prospects,” she continued.
Readers can find Reinhardt’s full essay here and CatholicVote’s report on immigration here.