From Vatican News:
Pope Leo XIV traveled to the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on July 4, 2026, marking his pastoral visit with a series of deeply symbolic gestures centered on the plight of migrants and refugees.
Upon landing at 8:54 AM on the Mediterranean island, which was the destination of Pope Francis’ first journey outside Rome after his election in 2013, Pope Leo likewise brought his closeness and solidarity to the island’s residents and to the many migrants who have passed through Lampedusa, as well as to those who never completed the journey.
The Holy Father first visited the local cemetery, which includes a section for “Muslims and Catholics, for young and old, black and white, all of them lost at sea as they searched for freedom.”
He then stopped at the “Gateway to Europe,” a sculpture symbolizing hope for those arriving by sea, before meeting a migrant family at Favarolo Pier, which was renamed in honor of Pope Francis for the occasion.
The Pope next celebrated Mass at Lampedusa’s sports field.
In his homily, Pope Leo reflected that today Lampedusa and its neighboring island of Linosa lie along a path as dangerous as the one that led from Jerusalem to Jericho in the Gospel parable of the Good Samaritan.
“Here,” he said, “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 lamented that the sea has claimed the lives of many others—”those who did not manage to reach their hoped-for destination”—whose presence, he insisted, “challenges us no less than that of those who have landed in need of attention and aid.”
“Indeed, before any intellectual consideration or ideological conviction,” Pope Leo XIV continued, “the encounter with those who lie before us, stripped of everything, calls us to be close to them.”
