Pope Francis’s sympathy for migrants was personal

Pope Francis was one of the most exalted people on earth, yet he often reminded people he was the child of immigrants. He raised his voice on behalf of migrants from his first days as pope, 12 years ago, to almost his last breath.

The pope’s father, Mario Bergoglio, was just 21 when he boarded a ship in Genoa in 1929 to cross the ocean for South America, in flight from the rise of fascism in Mussolini’s Italy.

“Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity,” Francis said in his 2013 message for the Vatican’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees. “They are children, women, and men who leave or are forced to leave their homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having, but above all for being more.” 

Francis was also the first pope from the Americas. When he came to the United States in 2015, he told a White House audience, “As a son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families.” 

And the very next day, he reminded a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress that as his family had come to Argentina from Italy, today many migrants came to the U.S. through long, hard journeys up from South America, “…in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities,” said Francis. “Is this not what we want for our own children?”

And as recently as this February, just a few days before he was admitted to the hospital, Pope Francis addressed a letter to U.S. Bishops about what he called “these delicate moments that you are living…” Mass deportations of migrants had begun.

He cited lives of people of the Bible who had been expelled from or fled from their lands, and said he also understood that new arrivals could disrupt the lives of those already there.

“The true common good,” Pope Francis wrote in one of his last messages, “is promoted when society and government… welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, uotected and vulnerable.”

The words of Pope Francis may sound compellingly personal on this day, as a son of immigrants is laid to rest before the world.