A nation owes its first duty to its own people: their safety, their livelihood, their laws and the faith that formed them. Pope Leo XIV's message to an American immigration summit last week left that duty out.
The pope sent the message Oct. 29 to an interfaith immigration policy summit hosted by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, known as CLINIC, OSV News reported. He thanked CLINIC for its work, "together with that of the many people, families, civic bodies and church communities who strive to uphold the dignity of migrants and refugees."
"Too often, these most vulnerable members of society are caught in situations which strip them of their human rights — an injustice that cries out to heaven," the pope said. He prayed the meeting "will help find new ways to awaken consciences to our shared moral duty for these brothers and sisters of ours, who, as Sacred Scripture and the saints untiringly remind us, are Christ visiting us in disguise."
Anna Gallagher, CLINIC's executive director, said the message "asks us to resist the indifference that reduces a person to a statistic."
The statistics are where the argument ends. The United States held 52.4 million international migrants in mid-2024, 15.2% of its population, according to the U.N. Population Division. The share was 19.8% in Germany, 21.4% in Sweden, 25.5% in Austria, 18.5% in Spain and 17.1% in Britain.
The sending nations show the same thing from the other side. About 1.57 million migrants from El Salvador live in the United States, a number equal to almost a quarter of the 6.34 million people living in El Salvador itself. The Dominican Republic's U.S. diaspora equals 13% of its home population, and Cuba's equals nearly 13%. Mexico has 11.3 million migrants in the United States. In Europe the figures run higher. Some 1.54 million migrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina live elsewhere in Europe, equal to nearly half the 3.16 million at home. Albania's European diaspora equals 43% of its home population.
An America that has taken in the equal of a quarter of El Salvador and a Europe that has taken in nearly half of Bosnia have not been indifferent. They have welcomed. No duty remains for America or Europe to serve as welcoming nations.
The Church's own text says why. Here is Catechism of the Catholic Church 2241 in full:
"The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him. Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens."
The welcome binds, but it is bound in turn. It runs "to the extent they are able," and no further. A duty measured by capacity is spent when capacity is spent. International migrants make up one in five residents of Germany and one in four of Austria. Those nations have reached the measure the Catechism set.
The rest of the paragraph belongs to the nation. Rulers act "for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible," and they "may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions." The newcomer is "obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens." A heritage the newcomer must respect is a heritage the nation may keep.
The Second Vatican Council asks more of each Christian. Gaudium et Spes 27 says "a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception and of actively helping him when he comes across our path," and it names "a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon" and "a refugee." That duty binds the person who meets the stranger. It does not repeal the measure 2241 sets for the nation, and the nation that keeps its laws looks down on no one.
The pope's message spoke of the migrant's rights, called him "Christ visiting us in disguise" and asked consciences to wake to "our shared moral duty" toward him. The passages published by OSV News and UCA News do not speak of the host nation's claims on its own people's behalf, its laws or its heritage, the other half of 2241. A framing that names only the host nation's duties and omits its rights binds the West without limit and binds no one to the heritage the Catechism says the newcomer must respect. That framing promotes the erosion of Western Christian peoples. By the Church's own teaching it is wrong, and for Christian White men it is a eminent evil.
St. John Paul II saw the erosion and named it. In Ecclesia in Europa in 2003 he wrote of "the loss of Europe's Christian memory and heritage, accompanied by a kind of practical agnosticism and religious indifference whereby many Europeans give the impression of living without spiritual roots and somewhat like heirs who have squandered a patrimony entrusted to them by history." He wrote that "European culture gives the impression of 'silent apostasy' on the part of people who have all that they need and who live as if God does not exist."
And he tied the problem to migration: "the number of the unbaptized is growing, both because of the significant presence of immigrants of other religions and because children born into families of Christian tradition have not received Baptism."
The hardest line against the nation's case comes from the same document. John Paul wrote that immigration "calls on the Church's ability to welcome each person regardless of the people or nation to which he or she belongs," and that everyone must work for "a mature culture of acceptance." The answer is in his next sentences. "Public authorities have the responsibility of controlling waves of migration with a view to the requirements of the common good," he wrote. "The acceptance of immigrants must always respect the norms of law and must therefore be combined, when necessary, with a firm suppression of abuses." He spoke of integration only for immigrants "who have been legitimately received." The Church welcomes every soul. The nation controls its gates. John Paul held both, and he gave the nation the gate.
He gave the nation its rights as well. Before the U.N. General Assembly in 1995 he said, "A presupposition of a nation's rights is certainly its right to exist: therefore no one — neither a State nor another nation, nor an international organization — is ever justified in asserting that an individual nation is not worthy of existence." He continued, "Its right to exist naturally implies that every nation also enjoys the right to its own language and culture, through which a people expresses and promotes that which I would call its fundamental spiritual 'sovereignty.'" A nation whose language, culture and faith are diluted past recovery loses that sovereignty as surely as one that is conquered.
The Catechism puts love of country in the same order. "The love and service of one's country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity," it says in paragraph 2239. St. Paul puts the household first: "If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim 5:8). A nation is the household of households. Its rulers owe their own people first.
The Catechism, read whole, and John Paul II, read plainly, say the West has done what it was able to do. What it owes now is owed to its own.
