Pope Francis talks with migrants at the port in Lampedusa, Italy, in July 2013 on his first trip as pontiff outside the Vatican. (Pool / Reuters / CNS file photo)
By Junno Arocho Esteves
OSV News
ROME — Not long after Pope Francis’ election in 2013, media pundits and faithful wondered and speculated what countries he would visit as pope.
Naturally, many assumed the newly elected pontiff would make Brazil his first official visit given that World Youth Day, a global event that has always counted on the presence of the pope, was scheduled to be held there.
Others wondered if he would return to his native land of Argentina, like St. John Paul II and the late Pope Benedict XVI made visits to their home countries not long after their respective elections.
Surprisingly, his first papal trip, just several weeks before departing for Brazil, was a visit to the small Italian island of Lampedusa.
Located just 70 miles from Tunisia, Lampedusa was the final destination for tens of thousands of African immigrants who died trying to reach a new life in Europe near its shores.
In his homily during a penitential Mass on the island, the pope mourned the loss of innocent lives and warned that the indifference to such tragedies occurs when “humanity as a whole loses its bearings.”
“Father, we ask your pardon for those who are complacent and closed amid comforts which have deadened their hearts,” he prayed. “We beg your forgiveness for those who by their decisions on the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies. Forgive us, Lord!”
Pope Francis’ one-day visit to the Italian island on July 8, 2013, while brief, set the tone for his 12-year pontificate until his death on April 21 at the age of 88.
Radical vision, humane approach
Amaya Valcarcel, a researcher for the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, said that during that during his reign, Pope Francis “set forth a clear and radical vision for an alternative and more humane approach to the challenges of involuntary migration.”
“Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis has modeled and preached a God of justice and mercy. He has made the hardships facing migrants and refugees worldwide a key focus not only in words but also in action,” Valcarcel told OSV News Feb. 27, 2024.
Valcarcel, who is also the international advocacy coordinator for the Jesuit Refugee Service, researched not only the phenomenon of migration but the impact Pope Francis made on the issue in the Catholic Church and in the world.
The pope, she said, showed that the world economy “seemingly needs the disparity of wealth, currently in evidence between countries.”
Furthermore, “due to a marked increase in conflicts and other aggravating factors such as climate change, many nations and peoples have been overrun with many people entering their lands in search of peace and security.”
“Sometimes, a misplaced sense of self-preservation has led to an obsession with keeping migrants away from national borders and this has closed hearts and minds to the reality of the hopes, fears, and aspirations of some of the world’s most needy people,” Valcarcel told OSV News.
“Pope Francis saw that countries were not acting as free agents in making moral decisions,” she added.
Words and deeds
Lampedusa was just the beginning of Pope Francis’ mission in bringing a sense of humanity back to the highly contentious issue of immigration, which in Europe and the United States spurred debates that often waded into the ideological, political and cultural divide.
Some saw the growing influx of migrants as a threat to a particular country’s cultural identity, as well as a public safety issue given the rise in criminal acts by migrants. Others argued against restricting illegal migration and felt that migrants and refugees were being unjustly punished or ill-treated for simply seeking a better life for themselves and their loved ones.
Pope Francis tried to stave off the growing divide on the issue by reminding both sides of the argument that the issue of migration was not merely a political, ideological or cultural issue, but a call for charity and love toward one’s neighbor.
Right after the Lampedusa trip, in August 2013, the pope explained his vision for the vulnerable of the world in a first papal interview with Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro.
“I see clearly,” the pope said, “that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful.”
In the next sentence he said something that became his mission statement: “I see the church as a field hospital after battle,” adding that healing wounds have to come before asking questions. “Then we can talk about everything else,” said the pontiff, but first “you have to start from the ground up.”
During a December 2023 audience with prefects of the Italian republic, the pope acknowledged that while the task of managing the increasing flow of migrants and refugees “is not easy,” government leaders must remember that they are entrusted to care for “wounded people, vulnerable people, often lost and recovering from terrible traumas.”
“They are faces, not numbers: people who cannot simply be categorized, but need to be embraced,” he said.
For Valcarcel, the Argentine pontiff, like his predecessors, “drew from core elements of the Christian faith and Catholic social teaching to develop a clear vision for an alternative and more humane approach to the challenges of involuntary migration.”
An example of advancing this vision was his creation in 2016 of the Migrants and Refugees Section, which as of 2023, was fully integrated with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
The Migrants & Refugees Section’s mission, she emphasized, has been “to assist the church (i.e. the bishops, the faithful, the clergy, church organizations) and every person of good will, to accompany those who are departing and fleeing, those in transit or waiting, those who are arriving and seeking to integrate, and those who return.”
