RADAR

A Heartfelt Call to Compassion

During his visit to the island of Lampedusa, Pope Leo XIV condemned the brutal treatment of migrants and refugees and the loss of life at sea and urged the world to concretely and compassionately respond to the “enormity of suffering”.

BY Deborah Castellano Lubov

THE POPE travelled to the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on July 4, 2026, marking his pastoral visit with a series of deeply symbolic gestures centred on the plight of migrants and refugees. Upon landing on the Mediterranean island, which was the destination of Pope Francis’ first journey outside Rome after his election in 2013, Pope Leo likewise demonstrated his closeness to and solidarity with the many migrants who have passed through Lampedusa, as well as those who never completed the journey, and the island’s residents.

The Holy Father first visited the local cemetery, which includes a section for “Muslims and Catholics, for young and old, black and white, all of them lost at sea as they searched for freedom.” He then stopped at the “Gateway to Europe,” a sculpture symbolizing hope for those arriving by sea, before meeting a migrant family at Favarolo Pier, for the occasion of its renaming in honour of Pope Francis.

The Sea That Claimed Many Lives

The Pope next celebrated Mass at Lampedusa’s sports field. In his homily, he reflected that Lampedusa and its neighbouring island of Linosa nowadays lie along a path as dangerous as the one that led from Jerusalem to Jericho in the Gospel parable of the Good Samaritan. “Here,” he said, “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.” He lamented that the sea had claimed the lives of many others—”those who did not manage to reach their hoped-for destination”—whose presence, he insisted, “challenges us no less than that of those who have landed in need of attention and aid.” Pope Leo XIV continued “Indeed, before any intellectual consideration or ideological conviction, the encounter with those who lie before us, stripped of everything, calls us to be close to them.”

Nothing Happens Automatically

Turning to the people of Lampedusa, the Pope expressed his gratitude for their solidarity. “I have come to thank you, brothers and sisters of Lampedusa, for the solidarity that so many of you have shown, for the ‘miracle of compassion’ once again taking place.” “Thank you, brothers and sisters,” he continued, “because there is nothing to be taken for granted in your reaching out to others; nothing happens automatically.”

The Pope said that those who allowed themselves to be drawn into this dynamic of compassion and mercy begin to live differently, become citizens in a new way, and work differently. In this way, he said, “the civilization of love” envisioned by his predecessors—Saint John XXIII, Saint Paul VI, and Saint John Paul II—can truly emerge. “Together with a great number of prophets and martyrs of the last century,” he said, “they understood that only mercy can respond to the depths of the human heart and the horrors of war by opening the way to a new beginning.”

Thus, Pope Leo made a heartfelt appeal. “May the enormity of the suffering we witness,” he said, “help us grasp the radical nature of this call.”

Source: vaticannews.va