April 22, 2025 // National

Migrants at the Heart of Pope Francis’ Field Hospital

Junno Esteves

Catholic News Service

ROME (OSV News) – Not long after Pope Francis’ election in 2013, media pundits and faithful wondered and speculated what countries he would visit as pope.

Naturally, many assumed the newly elected pontiff would make Brazil his first official visit given that World Youth Day, a global event that has always counted on the presence of the pope, was scheduled to be held there.

Others wondered if he would return to his native land of Argentina, like St. John Paul II and the late Pope Benedict XVI made visits to their home countries not long after their respective elections.

Surprisingly, his first papal trip, just several weeks before departing for Brazil, was a visit to the small Italian island of Lampedusa.

Located just 70 miles from Tunisia, Lampedusa was the final destination for tens of thousands of African immigrants who died trying to reach a new life in Europe near its shores.

In his homily during a penitential Mass on the island, the pope mourned the loss of innocent lives and warned that the indifference to such tragedies occurs when “humanity as a whole loses its bearings.”

“Father, we ask your pardon for those who are complacent and closed amid comforts which have deadened their hearts,” he prayed. “We beg your forgiveness for those who by their decisions on the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies. Forgive us, Lord!”

Pope Francis’ one-day visit to the Italian island on July 8, 2013, while brief, set the tone for his 12-year pontificate until his death on Monday, April 21, at the age of 88.

Radical Vision, Humane Approach

Amaya Valcárcel, a researcher for the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, said that during his reign, Pope Francis “set forth a clear and radical vision for an alternative and more humane approach to the challenges of involuntary migration.”

“Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis has modeled and preached a God of justice and mercy. He has made the hardships facing migrants and refugees worldwide a key focus not only in words but also in action,” Valcárcel told OSV News on Febuary 27, 2024.

Valcárcel, who also works as the international advocacy coordinator for the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), extensively researched not only the phenomenon of migration but the impact Pope Francis made on the issue in the Catholic Church and in the world.

The pope, she said, showed that the world economy “seemingly needs the disparity of wealth, currently in evidence between countries.”

Furthermore, “due to a marked increase in conflicts and other aggravating factors such as climate change, many nations and peoples have been overrun with many people entering their lands in search of peace and security.”

“Sometimes, a misplaced sense of self-preservation has led to an obsession with keeping migrants away from national borders, and this has closed hearts and minds to the reality of the hopes, fears, and aspirations of some of the world’s most needy people,” Valcárcel told OSV News.

“Pope Francis saw that countries were not acting as free agents in making moral decisions,” she added.

Words and Deeds

Lampedusa was just the beginning of Pope Francis’ mission in bringing a sense of humanity back to the highly contentious issue of immigration, which in Europe and the United States spurred debates that often waded into the ideological, political, and cultural divide.

Some saw the growing influx of migrants as a threat to a particular country’s cultural identity, as well as a public safety issue given the rise in criminal acts by migrants. Others argued against restricting illegal migration and felt that migrants and refugees were being unjustly punished or ill-treated for simply seeking a better life for themselves and their loved ones.

Pope Francis tried to stave off the growing divide on the issue by reminding both sides of the argument that the issue of migration was not merely a political, ideological, or cultural issue, but a call for charity and love toward one’s neighbor.

Right after the Lampedusa trip, in August of 2013, the pope explained his vision for the vulnerable of the world in a first papal interview with Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro.

“I see clearly,” the pope said, “that the thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful.”

In the next sentence, he said something that became his mission statement: “I see the Church as a field hospital after battle,” adding that healing wounds have to come before asking questions. “Then we can talk about everything else,” said the pontiff, but first “you have to start from the ground up.”

During an audience in December of 2023 with prefects of the Italian republic, the pope acknowledged that while the task of managing the increasing flow of migrants and refugees “is not easy,” government leaders must remember that they are entrusted to care for “wounded people, vulnerable people, often lost and recovering from terrible traumas.”

“They are faces, not numbers: people who cannot simply be categorized, but need to be embraced,” he said.

For Valcárcel, the Argentine pontiff, like his predecessors, “drew from core elements of the Christian faith and Catholic social teaching to develop a clear vision for an alternative and more humane approach to the challenges of involuntary migration.”

An example of advancing this vision was his creation in 2016 of the Migrants and Refugees Section, which as of 2023, was fully integrated with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

The Migrants and Refugees Section’s mission, she emphasized, has been “to assist the Church (i.e. the bishops, the faithful, the clergy, Church organizations) and every person of goodwill, to accompany those who are departing and fleeing, those in transit or waiting, those who are arriving and seeking to integrate, and those who return.”

Leading by Example

Pope Francis’ advocacy on behalf of migrants wasn’t limited to his words but accompanied by concrete actions and gestures. One such action that made headlines worldwide happened after visiting the Mòria refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, with Orthodox leaders in April of 2016.

The five-hour visit to the Greek island ended with him bringing three Syrian families back with him to Rome. After negotiating with the Italian and Greek governments, officials said the Vatican would assume financial responsibility for the families, with assistance provided by the Rome-based Community of Sant’Egidio.

Nour Essa, as well as her husband and son, were among the 12 Syrian Muslims chosen to fly back with the pope.

In an interview with OSV News on January 4, 2024, Essa remembered that fateful day and recalled Pope Francis patting her son on the head as he made his way to answer journalists’ questions aboard the papal flight.

One “journalist wondered if the pope was afraid that we wouldn’t fit in with the Italian community or that we might be (considered) a threat,” she said. “The pope replied that we were human beings who deserved to be saved and to live.”

Essa told OSV News that Pope Francis not only arranged her and her family’s transfer to Italy but followed up on their progress, inviting them to lunch at the Vatican in August of that same year.

“We talked to him, and he asked us how we were doing in the new society; he was very kind,” she said. “He talked to us about Kibbeh (a traditional Syrian dish that he tried when he was in Argentina).”

She also said they spoke about the threat of terrorism – one of several concerns often brought up in the debate on immigration – and the need “to separate it from religion.”

A year later, Essa said she met with the pope during his visit to Rome’s Roma Tre University and asked him a question “about the integration of foreign students in the university.”

“He said that it was not enough to give hospitality to refugees, but that it was also important to find ways to integrate them into society by finding work or study opportunities,” she recalled.

Since that life-changing journey in 2016, Essa and her family were helped by the Community of Sant’Egidio with their asylum application, as well as in learning Italian and in helping her and her husband to obtain degrees in biology and architecture, respectively.

The opportunity to live and integrate into Italian society allowed her to find a job as a microbiology researcher at Rome’s Bambino Gesù hospital. Her husband worked as a translator and as a junior architect until his company’s downsizing forced him to look for work. Her son, now age 10, is in the fifth grade.

A Legacy of Love and Peace

Essa told OSV News that her experience showed that integration “is not easy, because it needs cooperation between both sides, the refugees and the responsible organization, because both sides have their role.”

Nevertheless, she remains grateful to Pope Francis, who, “as head of the Catholic Church, (strengthened) the impact of religion in the spread of love and peace all over the world.”

“Pope Francis has always tried to send a message to the whole world to stop the war, and he (showed) the world the impact of war on the destruction of not only the countries but also the population,” she said.

Reflecting on the legacy of his pontificate, Valcárcel said Pope Francis’ major contribution to the Catholic Church and to the world “has been to model and preach a God who is both justice and mercy.”

Pope Francis saw “the Church’s contribution as one of many but has sought at the same time to infuse the political process with dignity and thus to make it accountable to a more universal set of ethical values, one that is consistent with the central principles of Catholic social teaching.”