The Catholic Church has a new American Pope, and he wasted no time making clear where his priorities lie.
Rather than spending July 4 with Americans celebrating 250 years of independence, he flew to a Mediterranean migrant island to pressure European governments to open the borders.
And before he left, Pope Leo delivered one stunning attack on America.
The Liberty Medal Speech Nobody Voted For
Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pontiff from Chicago, was awarded the Liberty Medal by the National Constitution Center for his “lifelong work promoting religious liberty and freedom of conscience.”
The Pope told the crowd, “In these past 250 years, for so many peoples throughout the world, it was the firm resolve to achieve the noble vision of the nation’s founders that made America a byword for freedom, as the country opened its doors to successive waves of immigrants, enabling them and their children to play their part in shaping the future of the nation.”
Fine words. But notice what’s missing from that framing. There’s no distinction between legal immigrants who came through the front door, built something, and became Americans in every meaningful sense — and people who entered the country illegally, often with the help of cartels charging thousands of dollars per head. The Pope flattened that distinction entirely, which is exactly what open-borders advocates have been doing for years.
He continued, “Today, as we look to the future, this historic anniversary presents us with the opportunity to reflect once again on the nation’s founding principles in the hope that America will remain ever true to the dream that has earned it the title of land of the free and home of the brave.” He concluded his remarks by stating, “The moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to support, protect and cherish the lives of all, especially the most vulnerable and those whose worth is questioned.”
Nobody disagrees with protecting the vulnerable. The question is whether “welcoming immigrants” without qualification means the same thing as maintaining secure borders, enforcing immigration law, and protecting American workers and communities. The Pope didn’t bother to address that tension.
He told the Philadelphia audience, “It is my hope that this tradition will continue to bear fruit in a public discourse marked by moderation, respect for the views of others, that ongoing effort to find common ground in promoting the cause of peace and reconciliation at home and abroad.”
Moderation. Right. From a Pope who has been anything but moderate in his criticism of American immigration enforcement.
The Lampedusa Trip Says Everything
Leo drew the ire of Donald Trump last year after calling the president’s hard-line anti-immigration policies “inhuman.” That’s not the language of a neutral spiritual shepherd. That’s the language of an activist.
Rather than marking Independence Day with Americans, Pope Leo spent July 4 on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a gateway for migrants crossing the Mediterranean that has become an international symbol of the global migration crisis.
During a day trip to Lampedusa, a gateway for migrants risking dangerous Mediterranean crossings into Europe from Africa, the Pope urged European leaders to do more to assist arrivals, which have topped 7,000 this year.
At the island, Leo told those gathered, “Here you have seen not just one, but thousands of human beings fallen into the hands of robbers who have taken everything from them, beat them brutally and walked away, leaving them half-dead. The sea has claimed the lives of others, those who did not manage to reach their hoped-for destination. Yet we feel their presence, which challenges us no less than that of those who have landed in need of attention and aid.”
Powerful imagery. But the Pope offers no accounting for the criminal networks that profit from moving human beings across those waters, no acknowledgment that open-door policies in Europe have fueled those networks for years, and no recognition that the nations being lectured are dealing with real social and economic consequences their citizens never consented to absorb.
Leo called on European leaders to tackle migration “in a comprehensive manner, integrating immediate relief efforts into a long-term strategic plan capable of receiving, protecting, supporting and integrating migrants.”
And who pays for that long-term strategic plan? Not the Vatican.
The Silence That Speaks Loudest
Here is what Pope Leo has not done since ascending to the papacy: publicly rebuke a single Democrat politician for supporting abortion-on-demand. Not Joe Biden. Not Nancy Pelosi. Not one of the dozens of Catholic members of Congress who vote year after year to fund Planned Parenthood, which performs hundreds of thousands of abortions annually while collecting hundreds of millions in federal taxpayer dollars.
The Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion is not ambiguous. It is one of the clearest, most consistently held doctrinal positions in the history of the institution. And yet the Pope finds time to call American immigration enforcement “inhuman” while remaining conspicuously quiet about Catholic politicians who openly defy Church teaching on the most fundamental question of human life.
That selective moral emphasis is a choice. It is not a coincidence that the positions Leo amplifies — open borders, mass migration, criticism of enforcement — map almost perfectly onto the platform of the American Left. And it is not a coincidence that the positions he stays silent on — abortion, the dismantling of the family, gender ideology — are the ones that would put him in direct conflict with the Democrat politicians his immigration advocacy effectively supports.
Since becoming Pope in May 2025, Leo has made support for migrants a central theme of his papacy. Last month, he warned that history would judge harshly leaders who mistreat immigrants.
But history will also judge leaders — and popes — who stayed silent while millions of unborn children were killed, and who reserved their sharpest moral language for border agents doing their jobs.
The Declaration of Independence, which Leo invoked in his Philadelphia speech, begins with the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the right to life. The Pope himself quoted the founding document, recalling “the words signed by the founding fathers of the nation 250 years ago in Philadelphia in the Declaration of Independence,” noting it affirmed that “all men have received fundamental rights from our creator, and they include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Life comes first. It is listed first. It is not negotiable in the document the Pope chose to quote. And yet the American politicians most aggressively working to strip that right from the unborn have never received from this Pope the kind of moral rebuke he freely delivers to immigration enforcement officials.
That’s not an accident. That’s a pattern. And American Catholics — and Americans generally — deserve to name it plainly rather than treat every papal press release as if it arrived from a position of perfect political neutrality.
The Pope is entitled to his views. But he is not entitled to invoke America’s founding principles selectively, accept a medal from a Philadelphia institution, skip the actual Independence Day celebration to fly to a migrant island, and have all of that covered as if it were simple pastoral concern rather than a coordinated political statement dressed up in vestments.
Leo told his audience, “In order for a nation to flourish, it must be truly united — united not by goals bound to momentary endeavors, but by ideals that do not fade with the passing of time.”
Hard to argue with that. But unity built on ignoring the rule of law, erasing the distinction between legal and illegal entry, and lecturing sovereign nations about their border policies while staying silent on the killing of the unborn is not the kind of unity the Founders had in mind. And it is not the kind the American people voted for in November 2024.
Sources: Fox News; NBC News; Reuters via Investing.com; Newsweek; Religion News Service; The Gateway Pundit; Al Jazeera