Pope Undercuts Trump’s July 4 Bash With Veiled Message
Pope Leo XIV isn’t backing down from his opposition to Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
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The Chicago-born pontiff will mark the United States’ 250th anniversary with a quiet trip to Lampedusa, the southernmost point of Italy and a gateway to the West for migrants, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
His somber visit to a place that thousands of migrants perish trying to reach every year stands in stark contrast to the celebratory scenes expected across the United States. But Vatican officials told the Post that is precisely the point.
“An American pope—the first in history—who on July Fourth, the national holiday of the United States, chooses not to celebrate the birth of a nation and its borders but to stand on the wounded threshold of the Mediterranean,” Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, told the Post. “This, in itself, is already an unofficial statement.”
“This journey comes at a moment when the United States has made the closing of its doors to migrants a banner, and an American pope knows this all too well,” Spadaro went on. “His choice is not a head-on polemic—Leo does not point fingers—but a counterpoint. He reminds everyone that the dignity God gives to every person comes before the border.”
The White House did not respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
The pontiff and the Trump administration have repeatedly clashed, including over Trump and Israel’s war in Iran, Israel’s war in Gaza, and, most frequently, the administration’s hardline immigration policies. Just this week, Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, criticized the pope’s stance on immigration.
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“I do think that some of the things that have come out of the Vatican on the immigration question in particular have been troubling, and ultimately I disagree with it,” Vance said.
He went on: “What I would hope that the Catholic leadership has learned from some of the things that me, and Marco [Rubio] and the president have said about immigration is it’s not just about the dignity of the immigrant, it’s also about the dignity of the native-born people who have had their lives upended.”
The pontiff, for his part, has not minced words. Last month, he told reporters that as humans, we “don’t recognize the reason why these people were forced to leave their home countries. For many reasons—violence, war, conflict.”
He added: “To simply say, ‘We’re going to send them away and wash our hands of the problem’ doesn’t seem like the most Christian response.”
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