Pope Leo Will Spend July 4 Visiting Island Known For Migrant Crossings

Pope Leo XIV will spend July 4 visiting a Mediterranean island known for migrant crossings into Europe.

The Vatican announced this week that the first American leader of the Catholic Church will visit Lampedusa, a small Italian island that has for years served as a gateway for migrants traveling to Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

Pope Leo expressed a desire to visit the island in a video message sent to volunteers there last year, in which he said they "have shown … the smile and the attention of a human face to people who have survived in a desperate journey of hope."

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His predecessor, Pope Francis, celebrated Mass on the island in 2013 on an altar made of shipwrecked migrant boats, throwing a wreath into the ocean in honor of migrants who lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

The Vatican announced earlier this month that Pope Leo would not be visiting the U.S. this year, after Vice President J.D. Vance personally delivered an invitation from President Donald Trump during a visit to the Vatican in May last year.

Back home, Trump has promised to give the U.S. “the most spectacular birthday party the world has ever seen” this year, with a slate of programming called “Freedom 250.” Among the events rumored so far are an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout, an IndyCar street race through Washington, D.C., and a four-day athletic event featuring high school athletes.

Pope Leo's visit to Lampedusa follows a year of tensions between the Vatican and the Trump Administration over the President’s sweeping immigration crackdown in the U.S., which Pope Leo has spoken out against on several occasions.

Before he became Pope, then-Cardinal Robert Prevost shared several posts critical of both Vance and Trump’s policies.

In his first public address, he announced his commitment to the dignity of migrants and claimed that the issue was personal to him and his own story as a “descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate.”

“In a world darkened by war and injustice, even when all seems lost, migrants and refugees stand as messengers of hope,” Pope Leo then wrote in a letter on the World Day of Migrants and Refugees last year.

In September, he was more direct in his criticism of the Trump Administration’s immigration policy by name, questioning whether the poor treatment of immigrants was in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

“Someone who says I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don't know if that's pro-life,” he told journalists in September outside his residence in Castel Gandolfo.

He also spoke out in support of migrants again when his hometown city of Chicago, Illinois, became the focus of Trump’s crackdown in October 2025.

“You stand with me and I stand with you, and the church will continue to accompany and stand with migrants,” Pope Leo reportedly said after a meeting with a group of visiting American Bishops and Catholic leaders in October, who raised concerns about the deportation campaign. 

In December, he replaced New York Archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a friend of President Trump, with pro-migrant successor Bishop Ronald Hicks. In November, Hicks released a statement supporting a message from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) that expressed its opposition to “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” in the United States.

The decision also comes just days after Pope Leo declined an invitation to join Trump’s Board of Peace, a U.S.-led initiative launched by the president with the ostensible aim of rebuilding Gaza and solving other conflicts.  

A statement from the Vatican cited “certain critical issues” as a reason for the refusal. “One concern,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin told Vatican News, “is that at the international level it should above all be the U.N. that manages these crisis situations.”