Pope Leo XIV could hardly have chosen a more symbolic stage than Lampedusa, the tiny Italian island that has become known as the “Gate of Europe”. He passed through the monument holding the hands of a family from Africa. Then he went to pray at the graves of migrants who drowned attempting the crossing.
The visit, and the message behind it, soon drew criticism.
For many Catholics, the images reflected the Gospel's command to care for the stranger.
For others, particularly across Europe, they reinforced a growing sense that the Church has become far more attentive to those arriving at Europe's borders than to the faithful already living within them and to their needs for identity and safety.
That perception represents one of the greatest challenges confronting his pontificate so far.
Europe Has Changed
Lampedusa is no longer viewed simply as the site of a humanitarian tragedy. It has become the symbol of an immigration debate that has reshaped the continent over the past decade. The migration crisis of 2015 transformed politics across Europe. Images of drowned migrants opened the hearts of Europeans and contributed to the decision by Chancellor Angela Merkel to open Europe's borders as well.
That fateful decision created new images: columns of migrants descending on Europe, women sexually harassed at the Cologne New Year's Eve festivities in 2015, blood on the streets of Paris as ISIS terrorists who had used the refugee wave to infiltrate Europe butchered innocents.
Questions that once belonged largely to fringe parties now dominate elections: asylum systems under pressure, illegal migration, border security, Islamist extremism, housing shortages, integration failures and demographic change.
These concerns are not confined to secular conservatives. They are increasingly voiced by practicing Catholics who continue to attend Mass every Sunday and by those who have been recently attracted to the Church for its role in culture, arts and history.
Many of them fully accept the Christian obligation to help genuine refugees and to do charitable work. What they question is whether that should extend to Europe's governments losing control over migration and whether the social consequences of that large-scale immigration are being honestly discussed.
When the Vatican repeatedly chooses highly symbolic migrant visits while rarely offering equally visible recognition of these concerns, many believers conclude that Rome listens more carefully to migrants than to its own congregations – that it puts the stranger before the faithful.
Suicidal Compassion as the Sign of the Times
It is not difficult to understand why many young Catholics who have devoted themselves to evangelization feel that their efforts are increasingly being undermined. Much of Europe's quiet Catholic revival has been driven by adults drawn to the Church's history, liturgy, traditions and cultural inheritance. While “Catholic” means universal, the faith has never existed in isolation from the nations and civilizations in which it has taken root. Across Europe, Catholicism has become deeply interwoven with local customs, identities and historical memory.
For many of these converts, migration is therefore not simply a political issue but also a cultural and religious one. They see communities changing rapidly and wonder whether the Church is defending the Christian civilization that first attracted them to the faith.
Few images illustrate this tension more starkly than Pope Francis greeting Emmanuel Abayisenga during the Jubilee Year in 2016. Five years later, Abayisenga murdered Fr. Olivier Maire, the French priest who had offered him shelter after he had confessed to setting fire to Nantes Cathedral in 2020. The tragedy became, for many critics of the Church's migration policy, a symbol of the risks that can accompany an approach centered almost exclusively on mercy while giving insufficient attention to prudence and security.
Such cases are exceptional and it would be wrong to judge millions of migrants by the crimes of a few. Yet they have had a profound impact on public opinion. Islamist terrorist attacks, violent crimes committed by some asylum seekers and repeated failures to deport foreign offenders have altered how many Europeans view migration and especially the scope of migration since 2015.
Historically, the Church expressed its concern for the poor through missionary work, hospitals, schools and charitable organizations that served communities across the world. Charity was understood as a universal Christian duty, but it did not imply that a single continent should indefinitely absorb everyone seeking a better life or everyone entering illegally. Many European Catholics increasingly believe that this distinction has become blurred in the Church's public message.
The Sacrifices of Europe's Faithful
Many of Pope Leo's critics argue that his emphasis on migrants overlooks another group deserving of recognition: the European Catholics who have defended, preserved and rebuilt the Church through centuries of upheaval.
European Christianity was not shaped in peace alone. For centuries, Christian kingdoms resisted repeated invasions from outside Europe while monasteries, cathedrals and religious orders preserved learning, culture and faith through war, plague and political revolution. For many Catholics, that history remains inseparable from Europe's Christian identity.
The criticism extends beyond symbolism. Church charities involved in search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean insist they are fulfilling a humanitarian duty by saving lives at sea. But such operations have become part of a wider migration system that encourages dangerous crossings and ultimately benefits human-smuggling networks and incentivizes illegal migration. The Vatican rejects that interpretation, but the debate has become one of the defining controversies surrounding the Church's approach to the issue.
Many practicing Catholics also point to modern examples of Christian courage that receive comparatively little attention in light of migration.
Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame became a national hero in France after voluntarily taking the place of a hostage during an Islamist terrorist attack in Trèbes in 2018. A practicing Catholic, he sacrificed his own life in an act widely regarded as embodying Christian selflessness and courage.
Five years later, another Catholic captured public admiration under very different circumstances. Henri d'Anselme, a 24-year-old pilgrim walking across France to visit its cathedrals, happened to be in Annecy when a Syrian asylum seeker attacked children in a playground. Rather than flee, d'Anselme confronted the attacker using only his backpack in an attempt to protect the victims until police arrived.
Europe's Catholic Revival Meets Rome
For many Catholics, these are the figures who embody the renewal of Christianity in Europe. They are joined by the countless believers who gathered to pray as Notre-Dame Cathedral burned in 2019, by young converts entering the Church in record numbers and by ordinary parishioners striving to preserve Europe's Christian inheritance despite decades of secularization.
This helps explain why highly publicized meetings with newly arrived migrants resonate so differently among many European Catholics than they do within the Vatican. They do not object to Christian charity. Rather, they ask whether the Church shows the same public concern for those who have defended, sustained and sacrificed for the Christian civilization into which they themselves have converted.
Whether Pope Leo chooses to engage with those concerns may prove to be one of the defining questions of his pontificate. Europe has changed. The demographic profile of the Church is changing with it, and many of the younger Catholics now filling its pews bring different political instincts and different expectations from those that shaped the postwar Church.
