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Pope Leo XIV greeted about thirty Catholics from his hometown of Chicago in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday, two weeks after surgeons removed a cancerous tumor from his right lung.
Each wore a yellow T-shirt printed with Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the banner they unfurled quoted what the pope told Peruvian young people in July: “The Church … needs your holy rebellion.”
The visitors belong to the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, a Chicago network of clergy and lay Catholics that has spent the past year fighting the Trump-Vance administration for the right to pray with migrants held at the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois. They handed Leo an album of photographs and a book of letters written by the detainees themselves.
“You have inspired us and countless Bishops to carry on this work across the country,” Tiffany Swann-Covington of Our Lady of Africa Parish told the pope.
Abigail Ortiz Valles, a Mexican migrant and Scalabrinian lay missionary, told him about a mother of three, one with special needs, who was detained at a bus stop. “I see the face of Jesus and his passion in each person I meet there,” she said.
Leo “nodded, affirmed, and was moved,” coalition spokesperson Sarah Rand said afterward, and he stayed to pose for a photograph with the whole group.
Chicago Auxiliary Bishop José María García-Maldonado, who came to the United States from Mexico in 2001, traveled with them. A day earlier, members of the delegation sat down with officials at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the Vatican office responsible for migrants.
“Immigration policy may divide Americans politically, but the dignity of the human person is not a partisan issue; it is at the heart of our Catholic faith,” said Peter Jones, a coalition board member who teaches at Loyola University Chicago. “The Church cannot simply speak about human dignity. We have to show up where that dignity is threatened.”
Swann-Covington’s line about the bishops was no flattery. Earlier this month, St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski sued ICE after a Missouri jail proposed that priests hand the Eucharist to a guard in a package. Cardinal Blase Cupich had demanded access to detainees two days before.
The Chicago fight began last fall, during Operation Midway Blitz. ICE fenced off Broadview and turned away a Eucharistic procession in October 2025. On All Saints’ Day, García-Maldonado celebrated Mass outside the gate, and agents again refused to let clergy carry Communion inside.
Three days later, a reporter outside Castel Gandolfo asked the pope about Broadview. “I would certainly invite the authorities to allow pastoral workers to attend to the needs of those people,” Leo answered, and he reminded Americans that Jesus will ask each of us how we received the foreigner.
The coalition sued the Department of Homeland Security that November. This spring a federal judge forced ICE to open the doors (on Holy Thursday, four priests washed the feet of fourteen detained migrants), and since mid-May a rotation of 75 volunteer ministers has made more than 135 visits to over 725 people inside. The case is still pending.
Wednesday’s meeting lands six days before the midterm elections, and the pope is taking part in them.
As we reported earlier this week, the Will County Clerk’s office confirmed that Leo requested his Illinois mail ballot on Oct. 3. On Friday, the Vatican confirmed that he has submitted it, making Leo the first pope in history to vote in an American election.
“The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes,” the Vatican said.
Leo will not tell anyone which name to mark, and the Church endorses no candidate. He has said plainly that Catholics may not sit this one out. “We cannot remain as unengaged spectators,” he told St. Peter’s Square in September.
Immigration is on the ballot. The dignity of immigrants is on the ballot on November 3. Pope Leo has been clear where he stands.
Standing outside Castel Gandolfo a year ago, he asked the country to remember the men and women behind the fence at Broadview. “The spiritual rights of people who have been detained should also be considered,” the pope said.
“Many times they’ve been separated from their families for a good amount of time. No one knows what’s happening … but their own spiritual needs should be attended to.”
Catholics should vote their conscience on November 3.
Our Catholic voter guide lays out, race by race, where the candidates stand on the issues Pope Leo has raised. When you have read it, take the pledge to be a Pope Leo voter.
At Letters from Leo, we stand with the Chicago Catholics, clergy and lay alike, who walk into Broadview every visiting day, and with the detained men and women whose letters now rest in the hands of the first American pope.
Our faith teaches that a migrant behind a fence keeps every ounce of the dignity God gave him. The Chicago coalition proved in federal court that a locked gate at Broadview could not keep the sacraments out for long.
This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for a Church that shows up at the gate of a detention center and keeps showing up, even when the guards say no.
If you believe this movement matters, with Catholics and people of goodwill standing for the dignity of every migrant, I am asking you to join us.
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Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.
Leo XIV is doing the job in wonderful ways. He's supporting the marginalized but he's also getting those who are not marginalized to look beyond their own lives and urging them to act.
@ChristopherHale, the Coalition for Spiritual & Public Leadership does amazing work across Chicagoland. So happy to learn about their meeting with Pope Leo XIV. -- https://www.csplaction.org/