Pope Leo, like Pope Francis before him, cares deeply about immigrants

During a visit to the Vatican last year, I was moved to tears.

It was not prompted by the pope. And no tears poured out when I prayed inside St. Peter’s Basilica. The artwork on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was awesome, but it left me dry-eyed. 

The tears started on my way out, at the sight of a bronze sculpture in St. Peter’s Square.

It depicts a boat packed full of immigrants risking themselves and their children throughout history to flee to safety — Jews leaving behind Nazis; Cubans rushing from Communism; my mother leaving Panama in the 1950s to give her three children a chance to attend good schools.

The sculpture is called “Angels Unawares.” The words come from the New Testament urging Christians to welcome strangers because it can lead to being in the company of angels.

Pope Francis inaugurated the sculpture as a permanent display at the Vatican in 2019. He said he wanted it there to “remind everyone of the evangelical challenge of hospitality.”

That fits with Francis’s congressional address in 2015, the first and only papal address to Congress. He called on lawmakers to turn away from a “mindset of hostility” toward refugees and immigrants, rejecting what he called “the sins and errors of the past.” 

That call for accepting immigrants as “angels,” including those who are undocumented, made Francis a political target for right-wing U.S. politicians and political commentators, even after his death. Demonizing immigrants to arouse fear is their number-one tool for winning elections.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted this message on X the day after Francis’ death: “Today, there were major shifts in global leadership. Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.” The late conservative talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh once trashed Francis as “espousing pure Marxism.”

The same disapproval from the right is in store for the new pontiff, an American, Pope Leo XIV.

He once promoted a message online that read, “Saying Trump’s ‘bad hombres’ line fuels ‘racism and nativism.’”

And before he was elevated to lead the Catholic Church, the new pope used his social media account, according to Reuters, to post an article about U.S. immigration policy headlined: “J.D. Vance is Wrong — Jesus doesn’t Ask Us to Rank Our Love for Others.”

There are about 53 million Catholics in the U.S. — 20 percent of all adults. A February Pew Research poll found 78 percent of Catholics had a positive view of Pope Francis. Pew polling also shows that more than 40 percent of American Catholics are immigrants or the children of immigrants. 

Both the new and former pope have support among most Americans for their pro-immigrant stance. Polls show that is true even after the 2024 presidential race that saw Trump, the leading anti-immigrant candidate, win the White House. Currently, 28 percent of Congress is Catholic, and six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic.

A recent Fox News poll shows a plurality of Americans feel that the president is “being too tough both on illegal immigrants [44 percent] and those legally seeking asylum [46 percent] as opposed to not being tough enough [20 percent for illegal immigrants, 15 percent for asylum-seekers].” 

According to the Washington Post’s exit poll, Trump carried the Catholic vote in 2024 by a 15-point margin, 56 percent to 41 percent. Trump even won the Catholic vote in 2020, when he ran against a Catholic candidate, Joe Biden.

After his first 100 days in office, Fox polls showed Trump’s handling of immigration is opposed by 48 percent of Americans, a point higher than those who approve. 

That same poll found much higher approval, 55 percent, for Trump’s actions to stop illegal border crossing. That means a lot of people oppose an open border but also want a fair, humane immigration policy.

A new book supports that viewpoint. “The Truth About Immigration,” by Zeke Hernandez, a Wharton business professor, points out that 25 percent of new American companies have an immigrant among their founders. Hernandez also cites the fact that immigrants are “80 percent more likely than natives to start businesses,” and 36 percent of patented inventions in the U.S. come from immigrants.

“The bottom line,” he writes in arguing against viewing immigrants as criminals and a burden on schools and hospitals, is that “immigrants are net positive contributors to everything that makes a society successful.” 

That analysis has not changed Trump. And appeals from both Pope Francis and the man who would become Pope Leo have similarly failed.

Recently, Trump has shown defiance for the pope by offering a social media image portraying himself in full papal garb. Not everyone laughed. “There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President,” said the X account for the New York State Catholic Conference.

Trump and MAGA Republicans tried their best to close their ears to Pope Francis’s teachings on immigration. They similarly did not approve of his support for blessing gay people or his call for more government action to protect the environment from climate change.

Perhaps the Francis-haters in politics are the ones crying now. They will never be as beloved or influential as Pope Francis. The newcomer, Pope Leo XIV, will see to that. 

Rest in power, Pope Francis.

Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”