Pope Leo XIV will visit the Italian island of Lampedusa on 4 July in a highly symbolic visit as he continues to advocate for migrants’ rights.
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The Vatican announced the three-and-a-half hour visit in April which is scheduled to take place on the same day as the pope’s native United States marks Independence Day.
Pope Leo XIV has been outspoken on the issue of migration and has already visited one of Europe’s migration hotspots, Spain’s Canary Islands, where he stressed the need for a shared response to one of the archipelago’s biggest challenges.
The pontiff arrived in Gran Canaria earlier in June where he was greeted by Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, together with national, regional and local authorities.
“Human dignity has no passport”, the pope said.
“Today, here, by the sea, every life that arrives asks us what remains of our humanity. Sooner or later, we shall know whether we were able to safeguard it or whether we let indifference speak for us.”
The Canary Islands are a popular entry point for migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa but the crossing, mostly from Morocco, is fraught with risks.
More than 3,000 people died trying to reach Spain throughout 2025, an NGO said in December.
The Right to Life Monitoring 2025 report indicated that of the 3,090 deaths, 192 were women and 437 were minors.
Caminando Fronteras logged a record of more than 10,000 deaths at sea on the way to Spain in 2024.
The Italian island of Lampedusa is on another risky migrant sea route with people travelling from North Africa and occasionally as far away as Lebanon.
In early 2024, Italian authorities reported that just in a day and a half, more than 1,500 people arrived to the island, with 333 making landfall in one morning alone.
The island’s authorities raised the alarm after the swell in arrivals overwhelmed local migration facilities despite regular transfers to other centres in Italy.
Advocating for migrants globally was also a priority for Pope Francis. He went to Lampedusa in 2013 on his first pastoral visit outside Rome and, three years later on the Greek island of Lesbos, he brought back with him a dozen Syrian Muslim refugees.
Under Pope Leo XIV, the Catholic Church has continued to call for their humane treatment around the world, including decrying mass deportations in his home country, the United States.
Earlier this month, the pope exalted the first American saint, Mother Frances Cabrini, as a model for Christians today to care for migrants in need, after he visited her birthplace during a day trip to northern Italy.
Pope Leo XIV, who has clashed with the Trump administration over its migrant crackdown, urged young people in particular to learn about Cabrini’s life and service, once again confirming history’s first US pope as the heir to Pope Francis in prioritising the plight of migrants.
Cabrini, the patron saint of migrants, is well known to many Americans for her work caring for Italian immigrants in the United States at the turn of the last century.
Her work went beyond the US, however, as she crisscrossed the globe building schools, hospitals and orphanages for those who had nothing.
After she died in 1917, as a naturalised US citizen in the pope’s native Chicago, Cabrini was beatified and then canonised in 1946 as the first American saint.
“Let us ask ourselves: if Mother Francesca were alive today, what would her missionary spirit tell her?” the pope said.
“And what would a pope like Francis — who, as the son of Italian immigrants, made service to migrants one of the key priorities of his pontificate — ask of her?”
Additional sources • AP
