Pope Leo XIV Condemns Treatment of US-Bound Migrants in First Christmas Urbi et Orbi

From migrants across America to war-weary families in Gaza and Ukraine, Leo used his Christmas blessing to demand solidarity — and to remind the world that “the Lord’s birth is a birth of peace.”

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On a rainy Christmas morning in Rome, Pope Leo XIV stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and said Merry Christmas in an impressive ten languages.

Afterwards, during his first Christmas Day “Urbi et Orbi” address, Leo highlighted the suffering in Gaza, Yemen, and among migrants, and he called for peace in war-torn regions like Ukraine.

Front and center was the plight of refugees “who cross the Mediterranean or traverse the American continent” in search of hope.

The first U.S.-born pontiff made a point of shining the spotlight on migrants in the Americas, implicitly challenging a world that too often greets these families with indifference or hostility.

“Responsibility is the sure way to peace,” Leo declared. He urged people everywhere to stop shifting blame and instead “enter into the suffering of others and stand in solidarity with the weak and the oppressed.”

If humanity took that call to heart, “then the world would change,” he said.

He framed this appeal in the heart of the Christmas story itself. Jesus was born poor, laid in a manger after finding “no room in the inn,” and “in becoming man, [Christ] took upon himself our fragility,” Leo noted.

The infant in Bethlehem identifies with today’s marginalized. The pope drove this home by naming those modern “fragilities” one by one.

He invoked the plight of people “who have nothing left and have lost everything, like the inhabitants of Gaza,” and those “prey to hunger and poverty, like the Yemeni people.”

And he did not forget “those who are fleeing their homeland to seek a future elsewhere” — explicitly mentioning migrants on the move across Latin America.

The Child of Bethlehem Stands With the Suffering

He prayed “in a particular way for the tormented people of Ukraine”, pleading that “the clamor of weapons cease.”

Leo also appealed for justice, peace, and stability in the Holy Land and across the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, and his war-ravaged flock in Gaza. From Africa to Latin America, no conflict or crisis was too remote for a mention.

The pope methodically lifted up nations mired in war, oppression, and even natural disasters, insisting that true peace requires concrete solidarity with those who suffer.

Eight months into his historic papacy, Leo XIV used this Christmas “to the City and to the World” blessing to issue a moral wake-up call. He urged everyone celebrating Christ’s birth to open their hearts to people in pain, whether that be a neighbor without a job or an entire community shattered by violence.

“Let us not allow ourselves to be overcome by indifference towards those who suffer,” the pope implored, for “God is not indifferent to our distress.”

With that, he imparted his apostolic blessing and a final Christmas wish that echoed his namesake St. Leo the Great: “The Lord’s birth is the birth of peace.”

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