Pope Leo XIV: Inhuman Treatment of Immigrants 'Not Pro-Life'

Pope Leo XIV delivered a powerful critique of American political hypocrisy on October 1, 2025, declaring that support for harsh immigration enforcement is fundamentally incompatible with pro-life values. Speaking in the context of the controversy surrounding Senator Dick Durbin receiving an award from a Catholic university despite his abortion rights stance, the Pope made a broader moral argument: “Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life,” and more pointedly, “someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

The statement represented a direct challenge to the Trump administration’s immigration policies and to conservative Catholic political alignment in America. Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff and a Chicago native who spent decades as a missionary working with marginalized communities in Peru, was explicitly rejecting the selective application of “pro-life” principles that condemned abortion while supporting aggressive deportation, family separation, and harsh detention conditions for immigrants. His comments came as the Trump administration was escalating immigration enforcement through expanded ICE raids, increased detention capacity, and policies that restricted access to asylum and due process.

The White House immediately rejected the Pope’s characterization, with press secretary arguing that immigration enforcement was a matter of national security and rule of law, not moral equivalence with abortion. However, Pope Leo XIV’s statement resonated deeply within Catholic social justice communities and among immigrant advocacy groups, particularly because it came from an American Pope with direct pastoral experience serving immigrant communities. His remarks set the stage for further confrontations between the Vatican and the Trump administration, particularly regarding religious freedom for detained migrants—an issue that would come to a head just one month later when the Pope directly addressed ICE’s denial of clergy access to detainees in the Broadview facility near his hometown of Chicago.