Pope Leo’s First Major Document Rebukes Trumpian Walls, Defends Migrants and the Poor

The American pontiff says real Christians build bridges, not barriers — and holds up a U.S. saint as proof.

Pope Leo XIV’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te (“I Have Loved You”), is a powerful call to stand with migrants and the poor — and a pointed critique of Donald Trump’s obsession with building walls.

Pope Leo finished the document started by Pope Francis before his death. (Image Credit: USCCB)

Released this morning at the Vatican, the 104-page document urges Catholics worldwide to help immigrants and puts society’s most marginalized at the heart of the Church’s mission.

This apostolic exhortation comes at a time when many American politicians are trying to shutter Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services (Image Credit: USCCB)

It denounces an economic system that leaves countless people in poverty, rejecting “trickle-down” theories that promise only a few drops to the poor. Leo warns that unless we regain our moral compass and prioritize the needy, society will “fall into a cesspool” of lost dignity.

Pope Leo is explicit — our tangible love for the poor is a part of how God will judge us. (Image Credit: USCCB)

Build Bridges, Not Walls

In Dilexi te, Pope Leo explicitly echoes his predecessor’s famously blunt stance on border walls.

Recalling Pope Francis’s 2016 visit to the US-Mexico frontier — when Francis declared that anyone fixated on “building walls, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Leo invokes that criticism as his own.

“Where the world sees threats, she (the Church) sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges,” he writes, aligning himself with Francis’ rebuke of then-President Donald Trump’s border wall plans. Every migrant knocking at our door “is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community,” Leo emphasizes.

This line is an explicit critique of MAGA’s core project — building walls (Image Credit: USCCB)

In unequivocal terms, the pope argues that one cannot claim to follow Christ while shutting out the vulnerable — a direct challenge to anti-immigration policies rooted in fear. The exhortation thus signals clear continuity with the late Francis’s view that Christian love is incompatible with towering walls and hardened borders.

A Saint’s Example for America

As the first American to sit on the Chair of Peter, Pope Leo boldly points his fellow Americans to the example of the first American saint.

Dilexi te highlights St. Frances Xavier Cabrini — an Italian-born nun who became a naturalized U.S. citizen — as a model of Christian response to migrants.

He praises Saint Frances Cabrini, who crossed the Atlantic repeatedly to serve destitute immigrants.

“Armed with remarkable boldness, she started schools, hospitals and orphanages from nothing for the masses of the poor who ventured into the new world in search of work. Her motherly heart reached out to them everywhere: in hovels, prisons and mines.”

Mother Cabrini, the first U.S. citizen to be canonized, devoted her life to welcoming newcomers who were often victims of the unscrupulous.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII honored her as Patroness of All Migrants.

By spotlighting Cabrini’s legacy of compassion and concrete aid, Leo offers a blueprint for how Americans ought to treat migrants today: not with hostility or walls, but with open hearts, practical support, and “gestures of closeness and welcome.”

Image Credit: USCCB

In championing the cause of migrants and the poor, Pope Leo’s exhortation blends pastoral urgency with pointed social critique.

Image Credit: USCCB

It invites America — and the world — to rediscover the Gospel mandate to welcome the stranger and uplift the downtrodden.

Image Credit: USCCB

In an era of rising nativism and stark inequality, Dilexi te is both a moral defense of the “least of these” and a direct challenge to build bridges instead of walls.

Image Credit: USCCB

The message is clear: our treatment of migrants and the poor is the test of our fidelity to the faith, and on this score, there can be no more barriers — only solidarity.

Letters from Leo is open to anyone who wants to be informed and inspired by our pope — and to turn that inspiration into action that leaves America and the world more just, less cold, and more alive with hope.

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