COMMENTARY: Pope Leo’s call for hospitality is measured and faithful, but grand gestures can take on meanings beyond their intended message — with consequences that should not be ignored.
The Italian island of Lampedusa, landing site of many migrants from Africa into Europe, may be seen by human-rights advocates as a type of Ellis Island, a sort of safe haven.
For me, the immediate recollection is of three Catholics stabbed to death in the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice. One of the occupational hazards of having worked in counterterrorism is remembering some mundane details such as arrivals, departures, travel, weapons and ideology.
A 21-year-old Tunisian, Brahim Aouissaoui, arrived on Lampedusa in late September 2020. He had to spend two weeks in quarantine because of COVID-19 precautions. He then traveled by train on NGO money with an Italian Red Cross identification card until he arrived in Nice, where he proceeded straight to the basilica, waiting around until it opened before commencing his murder spree.
An unrepentant Aouissaoui was sentenced last year to life in prison without the possibility of parole, an uncommon sentence in France. His defense attorney summed it up best: “Was he aiming toward the West that he dreams of? Or the one he wants to take vengeance against? Or a bit of both?”
Pope Leo XIV’s July 4 Lampedusa visit was painted by the mainstream media as a pro-migrant measure, and it certainly was that. It received immediate, politicized hostility in some quarters. But observant Catholics have pointed out that everything Pope Leo said during his visit to Lampedusa had already been said by past popes. If anything, as Robert Kearney has pointed out, this Pope also carefully reaffirmed the right of nations to control their borders, the importance of addressing root causes of migration so that people don’t feel compelled to leave, and the need for migrants to respect the law and the social cohesion of the countries that are welcoming them.
Although Pope Leo was measured and nuanced in his remarks, this can often be lost to broader audiences. The headlines were far more sweeping than the fine print. The details are important, but all too often it is the larger image that leads and influences, even if that is deceptive. Pope Francis’ Fiducia Supplicans may have been measured and caveated, but it led to a photo of Jesuit Father James Martin blessing a same-sex couple on the front page of The New York Times.
Pope Leo wasn’t welcoming the likes of Brahim Aouissaoui, of course, but the casual, lazy or ill-intentioned observer might make the case that the Church is, knowingly or not, inviting its own destruction and marginalization. The case in Europe is fundamentally different from that of the United States in that Europe directly borders the lands of Islam. Americans may not like waves of migrants from Latin America, but there is at least some existing cultural or religious affinity — although, in some cases, that doesn’t even seem to matter. Some of the most violent protests against migrants worldwide have occurred in South Africa, aimed at migrants coming from other, poorer African countries. Similar culture, religion, same race, and yet still a bitter xenophobia.
That Europe will change seems to be a given. In Belgium, 23.7% of newborn children in the Flanders region have foreign-born, non-European parents. Italy accepts more migrants annually (380,000) than there were Italian live births (350,000 in 2025). Most of these migrants come from Muslim countries such as Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan, which — despite declining fertility worldwide — have large numbers of excess populations eager to migrate.
Might a reasonable European Christian assume that a Christian minority in Belgium or Italy could someday be treated like Christian minorities are today in Pakistan?
Some in Europe don’t even hide their satisfaction that the old order — the previous social cohesion and existing community — is passing away, and that this is actually a good thing. On July 5, Imane El Hamzaoui, a senior national coordinator at France’s far-left LFI (La France Insoumise), spoke to party cadres at Gennevilliers about those who fear the passing of the so-called “Eternal France.” She said that “the new France” being born does indeed sound like the death knell of France, or rather their France, and that they are “right to be afraid.”
LFI is France’s second-largest political party and, like similar left-wing parties in Germany, Britain and Spain, it is the favored political party of emerging migrant and Muslim populations.
We don’t know what the future holds. Demographics is destiny until it isn’t. A century ago, Baghdad was one-third Jewish. Egypt and Tunisia had large, flourishing Greek and Italian communities. The town of Bethlehem had a Christian majority. Today, that is all gone.
A few weeks from today will be the 10th anniversary of the martyrdom of the 85-year-old French priest, Father Jacques Hamel, stabbed to death at the foot of the altar during an interrupted Holy Mass in a Normandy church by two 19-year-olds who had sworn fealty to the Islamic State. One of the killers was born in Algeria; the second was born in France of Algerian parents. The details are important in the big narratives, but the grand and sweeping symbols also matter. In 2017, Father Hamel’s case for beatification began to be examined after Pope Francis waived the mandatory five-year waiting period.
There is nothing wrong with Pope Leo’s gestures and focus on Lampedusa. There is nothing wrong with our Holy Father’s call for hospitality and solidarity, to “reject indifference.” But the world is full of grand gestures. Sometimes they are just that, and other times they have fateful consequences, “of decisions that were made and of decisions that were not made.”
Some think of a basilica in Nice or a country church in Normandy and are also not indifferent.
