Pope Leo Defends Migrants in Istanbul as Trump-Vance Call for Total Immigration Shutdown
The first American pope uses his first overseas trip to defend migrants — even as MAGA pushes for a total shutdown of migration back home.
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At Istanbul’s Cathedral of the Holy Spirit on Friday, Pope Leo XIV gazed out at a “little flock” of Turkish Catholics — a tiny community comprising just 0.05% of Turkey’s population.
Instead of lamenting their insignificance, the first American pope urged them to see grace in being small. “When we look with God’s eyes, we discover that he has chosen the way of littleness,” Leo said, pointing to the mustard seed and the “little ones” Jesus praised.
The true strength of the Church, he explained, “does not lie in her resources or structures” or in numbers or influence, “but in remaining gathered around Christ and sent by the Holy Spirit.”
In other words, the Gospel grows quietly from humility, not through displays of dominance.
The pope warned that the Church strays from Christ whenever it starts chasing wealth, political clout, or big crowds — a temptation to power that he insisted must be rejected if Christians are to be faithful.
Leo’s speech — delivered in a city that was once the heart of Byzantine Christian grandeur — deliberately flipped the script on what greatness means. He cautioned the Turkish faithful not to treat their rich heritage as mere nostalgia for past glory.
Instead, he called them to adopt God’s perspective: to recognize that the Almighty chose to come into the world in littleness, as a child in a manger on society’s margins.
“The Kingdom of God,” Leo reminded, “does not impose itself with displays of power.” In this paradoxical “logic of littleness” lies the true strength of the Church.”
Far from seeking privilege or dominance, the pope said, Christians should be known by their Christ-like humility and care for those on the peripheries. He even quoted Jesus’ reassuring words — “Do not be afraid, little flock” — to encourage this minority community to have hope.
That hope, Pope Leo stressed, must translate into concrete love, especially for migrants and refugees.
Turkey today hosts millions of displaced people, so Leo urged the Church there to step up as servants to “the most vulnerable people” arriving at their shores.
He lauded Turkish Catholics’ diversity — many are immigrants themselves — and said this calls for a deeper inculturation, a process of making the local language and culture “more and more your own.”
In short, Leo argued migrants should be welcomed and helped to integrate, enriching their new society without losing their identity.
Pope Leo’s vision is of a Church that walks with the outsider: listening to young migrants’ questions, providing for their needs, and building unity across cultures and religions.
It’s a vision utterly opposed to the idea that greatness is measured by might.
In Istanbul, the American pope chose the road of the Beatitudes — blessing the poor, the peacemakers, the meek — over any instinct to grasp at power.
As he prayed with Turkey’s tiny Catholic minority, Leo XIV was lifting up the little ones as the path for the Church’s future.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, a very different response to the little ones was unfolding in Washington, DC.
On Wednesday an Afghan asylum-seeker ambushed two National Guard members patrolling near the White House, killing one and wounding another.
The tragedy could have been a moment for unity and sorrow; instead, Donald Trump and JD Vance unsurprisingly pounced on it as political fuel.
They swiftly labeled the shooting a terrorist attack and blamed it on “Biden-era vetting failures,” even though the suspect had been thoroughly vetted and granted asylum under Trump and Vance’s own administration just months ago.
Within hours, the president ordered an indefinite halt to Afghan refugee admissions and launched a sweeping purge of immigration programs.
Trump officials began a widespread review of asylum cases and even green cards for people from 19 countries — mostly poorer nations — as they looked for ways to kick out recent arrivals.
The message from the MAGA movement was blunt: one immigrant’s crime was grounds to turn America into a fortress.
President Trump took to social media and declared a new ban. “I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” he proclaimed, promising to “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States.”
In one breath, the leader of the free world cast entire nations of people as threats and drained of dignity — a chilling contrast to Pope Leo’s insistence that every vulnerable person is beloved by God.
Trump’s hardline base echoed the call, demanding not only a ban on new refugees but the expulsion of those already here.
“We’re going to be getting them all out now,” Trump told reporters, referring to Afghan evacuees and others whom the U.S. had welcomed during wartime.
The push even extended to the shooter’s family: asked if he would deport the suspect’s wife and five children, Trump coldly answered that officials were “looking at the whole situation with family”
In the name of security, the administration moved to tear apart refugee families and seal off America’s borders — effectively telling countless innocent people that they are disposable.
The contrast could not be more stark. In Istanbul, Pope Leo XIV — the first pope from the United States — used his very first trip abroad to champion the dignity of migrants and the power of mercy.
In Washington, a U.S. president responded to violence with an appeal to fear and force, doubling down on the idea that strength comes from exclusion.
Leo’s “little flock” homily was a direct challenge to any society that equates greatness with domination. Like other speeches he wants to reverberate internationally, he delivered it in English.
“The Church’s true strength… resides not in resources or structures,” he told the faithful, but in the Holy Spirit’s work among the lowly.
He is asking Christians to stand with the migrant, the outsider, the little one, even when demagogues scream at them to build walls instead.
And he’s doing so as a pastor who knows the American landscape — implicitly rebuking the powerful back home who have forgotten the Gospel imperative to welcome the stranger.
It’s a tale of two responses. Pope Leo’s vision is of a Church that chooses humility over “might makes right,” service over selfishness, “littleness” over large-scale cruelty.
The MAGA vision, on the other hand, exalts raw power and suspicion — shutting the door precisely on those Jesus calls us to love.
As Leo XIV told the small Catholic minority in Turkey, God himself entered history as one of the littlest and most vulnerable. To side with the weak and hurting isn’t political correctness; it’s the heart of the Gospel.
And on this historic day, the American pope and the Trumpist movement presented the world with a choice. Will we lift up the lowly, or cast them out? Leo XIV has made his choice.
The question now is whether the American people — especially people of faith — will have the courage to embrace that logic of littleness over the logic of fear and domination.
As for me — and for this community — we stand with Pope Leo.
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It’s a petty man who belittles and demeans the vulnerable.
Thanks so much for your newsletters on pope Leo and your analysis of his words and actions. It is so good to see him standing up for what is right! It’s refreshing and a needed break from the darkness of our sick president and his ilk.