U.S. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, extended an invitation to Pope Leo XIV on behalf of the Trump Administration to attend the gala celebration of July Fourth in the U.S. on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The Pope, however, rather than attend the pomp and circumstance, with F-35s overhead and fireworks, plans to spend that day on Italy’s Lampedusa Island, the site thousands of migrants arrive who managed to survive the perilous journey across the Mediterranean (unlike the thousands of others who have drowned trying). Pope Leo has been outspoken in the defense of the migrants, who are being treated like dogs in the U.S. and elsewhere, and, despite being the first American Pope, coming from Chicago, could not agree to attend the U.S. under these circumstances.
According to the Irish Star of Feb 21, the Pope will not visit the U.S. at all, at least not this year, and recently announced that he would not join President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace (better called the Board of Directors of the imagined Riviera on the ruins and skeletons in Gaza.)
The Irish Star quotes Christopher Hale, who “documents Vatican affairs through his ‘Letters from Leo’ reports,” who writes: “On the very day of America’s 250th, [the Pope] will kneel on a rocky outcrop closer to Tunisia than to Washington, bearing witness to those dying in desperate search of freedom. The contrast could not be sharper.
“President Trump envisions F-35 flyovers and fireworks in the capital’s sky; Pope Leo will stand under the same Sun on Lampedusa, greeting strangers at the door…. Trump wraps himself in the trappings of national glory, while Leo embraces what he calls the ‘moral obligation’ to welcome the migrant and refugee…. The 70-year-old pontiff has made clear that true greatness is measured by our treatment of the least among us, not the size of our parades,” reports Hale.
“He has repeatedly condemned what he calls the ‘inhuman’ persecution of immigrant families, aligning the Church firmly against the mass deportations and border cruelty of the Trump era.”
