While the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with rallies, parties and fireworks, history’s first U.S.-born pope traveled to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa to pray at a migrant cemetery and celebrate a solemn Mass for the island’s residents and newest arrivals.

A treeless strip of rock 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) long, Lampedusa is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland and is the main port of entry into Europe for hundreds of thousands of migrants who crossed by boat from Libya or Tunisia, often smuggled by human traffickers.

Leo met with some migrants at the port and then walked alone onto the jagged jetty rocks, the wind whipping his cassock and blowing his zucchetto skullcap off as he looked out to the sea. He then blessed a plaque dedicating the dock to Pope Francis, who visited in 2013, before celebrating Mass on land.

“This is a place where gestures speak louder than words,” Leo said. “But for gestures to be human, they need a heart.”

In making the visit on this particular Saturday, Leo was sending a powerfully symbolic message to the United States and Europe of the Christian obligation to uphold the dignity of every human being, migrants and the most vulnerable especially, while reminding the United States that it was founded by immigrants.

In a letter sent to Americans on the July 4 anniversary, Leo insisted that protecting the unborn and all human life also means “welcoming, protecting and assisting immigrants, whose hopes, sacrifices and contribution have formed part of the history of this country from its very beginning.”

“To receive them with compassion and generosity is not only an act of charity, but also a recognition of the dignity that belongs to every human person,” Leo wrote.

A tiny island becomes Ground Zero for European migration

In recent years, Lampedusa has become Ground Zero of Europe’s migration debate as the continent struggles to police its borders while honoring its legal obligations to welcome refugees fleeing conflict, climate change and poverty.

In his homily, Leo thanked the residents of Lampedusa for the “miracle of compassion” they have shown in welcoming migrants and urged Europe to rise to the challenge of the moment and assume its responsibility.

“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,” Leo said, wearing vestments decorated with images of waves.

Preaching from “this far-flung corner of Europe on the Mediterranean Sea,” Leo urged European leaders to address the migration phenomenon in a comprehensive way, integrating immediate relief with a long-term strategies to receive, protect, support and integrate migrants while developing their home countries so no one is forced to migrate.

“Here 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 said.

Others have died making the voyage, he said, “yet we feel their presence, which challenges us no less than that of those who have landed in need of attention and aid.”

The number of migrants arriving in Italy so far this year is significantly lower than in recent years, with the Interior Ministry reporting 14,464 arrivals as of Friday compared with 30,598 in the same period last year and 26,202 in 2024.

At the same time, the International Organization of Migration has recorded more than 35,000 missing migrants in the Mediterranean since 2014, though the actual number of dead is believed to be far higher given the untold number of “invisible” shipwrecks that are never recorded.

Leo has strongly emphasized the need to uphold the dignity of migrants, especially amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation program in his native Chicago. But he has also directed his message to Europe’s Christian leaders.

Last month, Leo visited another European migration hot spot, in Spain’s Canary Islands, to shame leaders who turn migrants away indifferently while also warning people smugglers they will face God’s wrath for exploiting the desperation of migrants.

Leo honors the dignity of the dead and recalls Francis

After arriving in Lampedusa by plane, Leo paid homage to the dead at the island’s migrant cemetery, laying a wreath of yellow and white flowers on their graves, marked by simple crosses made from the splintered wood of shipwrecked boats.

The gestures send a “strong message” of solidarity, said Tareke Brhane, a migrant from Eritrea and president of the October 3rd Committee, a nonprofit founded by relatives of victims of a 2013 shipwreck in Lampedusa that left 368 people dead.

“It is a strong sign for our battle with Italy and with Europe in order to register the deaths, because as of today we still do not have a registry (of those deceased),” he told The Associated Press.

Leo’s visit both honors the dead and “gives a message to the relatives, so many of them still waiting and suffering,” he said.

With his visit, Leo followed in the footsteps of Francis, who made the plight of migrants and refugees a priority of his pontificate. For the Catholic Church, welcoming and accompanying people fleeing hardship is part of the Gospel-mandated call to “welcome the stranger.”

Francis traveled to Lampedusa in July 2013, on his first trip outside Rome after his election. He tossed a wreath into the sea in memory of migrants who had died and denounced the “globalization of indifference” that the world shows migrants.

Salvatore Sortino, the IOM’s head of mission for Italy and Malta, said despite the decrease in arrivals, the number of dead had increased proportionally, “in the sense that the diminishing numbers of arrivals hasn’t resulted in a lower number of deaths at sea.”

“That speaks about the vulnerability that remains,” he said. “So the visit of the pope here, where all this happens, I think is a very important reminder of that element.”

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Winfield reported from Rome.

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