Pope Leo XIV tells migrants 'I want to bow before your dignity,' applies Matthew 25 to crisis

'Human dignity has no passport'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Friday, June 12, 2026

Pope Leo XIV applied Matthew 25:41-45 to the immigration crisis in Europe while telling migrants that he wants to "bow before your dignity" during his tour of Spain this week.

"Dear migrants, before saying anything else to you, I want to bow before your dignity," the pope said during a Thursday speech in Spanish at the Port of Arguineguín on the island of Gran Canaria. The Spanish island off the coast of northwestern Africa has served as one of the main entry points for African migrants attempting to cross the Atlantic into Europe in recent years.

"You are not just numbers or files. You are people who have left behind families and homes. You have dreams that no one has the right to despise," continued the pope, who went on to warn migrants against falling in with human traffickers.

"Do not surrender your lives to those who trade with them. Do not believe those who promise easy paradises in exchange for your body, money, silence or freedom," he said.

"Dear migrants, before saying anything else to you, I want to bow before your dignity. You are not just numbers or files," Pope Leo XIV said in a meeting with organizations working with migrants at the Port of Arguineguína in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.

In his address the… pic.twitter.com/HQcw12quvl

— Vatican News (@VaticanNews) June 11, 2026

The port of Arguineguín was once dubbed the "dock of shame" when makeshift camps were set up there to handle the large swell of boat arrivals amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Thousands slept outdoors in squalor before eventually being relocated to emptied hotels.

The pope acknowledged and condemned the violence from which many migrants are escaping in their home countries.

"While there is a right to seek refuge when life is threatened, there is also the right not to have to migrate: the right to remain in one's own home without hunger, war, persecution, violence, the land becoming uninhabitable, corruption stealing the bread from the poor or weapons destroying the future of children. We cannot grow accustomed to counting the dead," he said.

"Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border," he added.

The pope's address cited Matthew 25:41-45, which is Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats, and Luke 5:10, where Jesus told Peter, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." He applied both to the issue of immigration in Europe, where the foreign-born population has risen from approximately 41 million in 2010 to roughly 63-64 million by 2024, according to the Rockwool Foundation.

The pope has applied Matthew 25 to immigration policy in the past. Earlier this year, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., pushed back against the use of the chapter to justify open borders and laid out his view of the biblical basis for immigration law, borders and national sovereignty.

Johnson, a Southern Baptist, claimed the Bible's moral imperatives for personal conduct and hospitality do not necessarily apply in the same way to the civil magistrate, whom God has deputized to enforce the law. He also noted that "borders and walls are biblical," and that assimilation was expected from immigrants to ancient Israel even under Old Testament law.

Q: Pope Leo cited Matthew 25:35 to critique Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. How would you respond to Pope Leo in scripture?

MIKE JOHNSON: Sovereign borders are biblical and right and just. It's not because we hate the people on the outside. It's because we love the… pic.twitter.com/eS4A5dtXRt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 3, 2026

"You're supposed to take care of the sojourner and the neighbor, treat them as yourself, welcome them in, yes," Johnson said. "But that is an admonition to individuals, not to the civil authorities."

Citing Romans 13, Johnson said civil authorities "are given authority under Scripture to maintain order," and that they are "God's agents of wrath to bring punishment upon the wrongdoer."

"It's a calling to maintain order in society, and we have not had that," he added, offering the consequences of mass immigration under the Biden administration as an example of what happens when the civil authority neglects its God-given duty.

The U.S.-born pope has been publicly at odds with the Trump administration over immigration and the war in Iran, recently declining an invitation from Vice President JD Vance to attend the 250th anniversary celebration.

The pope will instead spend July 4 in Lampedusa, an island in the Mediterranean Sea that has also featured as a major entry point for migrants flooding Europe.