“Welcoming, Protecting and Assisting Immigrants” — Pope Leo XIV’s Birthday Letter Says the Words Trump’s Speeches Would Not

Dated June 25, the pope’s letter for the semiquincentennial calls welcoming immigrants a recognition of God-given dignity. When Trump’s two speeches turned to today’s newcomers, he saw only a “communist menace.”

Pope Leo XIV greets migrants at Lampedusa’s Favaloro Pier on July 4. The pope dedicated the pier to Pope Francis before celebrating Mass on the island, where thousands of people seeking Europe have died at sea.

Letters from Leo is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country — a movement for human dignity in the face of authoritarianism. On America’s 250th birthday weekend, I am asking you to join us.

Pope Leo XIV spent the 250th birthday of the United States on Lampedusa, an eight-square-mile Italian island that sits closer to Africa than to the Italian mainland, laying a wreath over the graves of migrants who drowned trying to reach Europe.

Donald Trump chose different scenery. The president saluted “the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history” beneath the floodlit faces of Mount Rushmore on Friday night, and on Saturday — after lightning forced a roughly two-hour evacuation of the National Mall — he took the stage in Washington late that night to declare the American republic “the crowning achievement of human history” and America itself “a nation of winners.”

Between the island and the stages sits a letter, and the letter is what this weekend will be remembered by.

Pope Leo XIV lays a wreath at the graves of migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean, at Lampedusa’s island cemetery on July 4. Many of the graves are marked by crosses cut from the wood of shipwrecked boats.