Speaking to participants in the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements Oct. 23, Pope Leo decried policies that treat migrants “like garbage” and lamented the deadly trafficking of fentanyl, particularly in the U.S.
“States have the right and the duty to protect their borders, but this should be balanced by the moral obligation to provide refuge,” the Holy Father said, echoing the teaching of the Church reflected in the Catechism.
“Ever more inhuman measures are being adopted – even celebrated politically – that treat these ‘undesirables’ [migrants, ed.] as if they were garbage and not human beings,” he added, according to Vatican News. “Christianity, on the other hand, refers to the God who is love, who creates us and calls us to live as brothers and sisters.”
The remarks came after Pope Leo had explained a number of “new things” that harm society, including, as Vatican News reported, paraphrasing, “the yearning that social media creates in the poor, who see the exaltation of falsely exaggerated lifestyles and unbridled consumerism.”
“At the same time, digital gambling platforms harness dark patterns to create compulsive dependency and addictive habits based on events outside one’s control,” Vatican News continued. “Pope Leo also decried the pharmaceutical industry’s promotion of a ‘cult of physical wellbeing, almost an idolatry of the body, in which the mystery of pain is reduced to something totally inhuman.’ This attitude leads to dependency on pain medications and deadly drugs such as opioids and fentanyl, especially in the United States, he said.”
Pope Leo did not mention the U.S. in his comments about the mistreatment of migrants Thursday, but he has recently mentioned what he called the “inhuman” treatment of migrants under the Trump administration.
American Catholic writer Francis Maier wrote an analysis published at First Things Oct. 22 in which he grappled with how Catholic teaching can be applied to controversies over the latest deportation policies in the U.S.
“[Maier wrote] that it is reasonable to criticize the Trump administration’s approach to deporting illegal immigrants as ‘too broad and too blunt,” CatholicVote reported.
“Along with arresting gang members, traffickers, murderers, and rapists, they sweep up innocent, undocumented immigrants who pose no criminal threat, and many of whom contribute as much to this country as they gain from it,” Maier noted.
“However, he argued, these deportation efforts were inevitable due to the Biden administration’s oversight of the border collapse and both political parties’ failure to create sustainable immigration reform in the past 20 years,” CatholicVote’s report explained.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states (CCC, 2241) that “[the] more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin,” and that “[public] authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.”
“Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption,” the Catechism continues, adding: “Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”
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