(OSV News) — Days after participating in Pope Leo XIV’s July 4 visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa — where close to 50,000 refugees and migrants landed in 2025 alone — theologian and Holy Cross Father Daniel G. Groody spoke with OSV News about his work in bringing Catholic theology to the issue of migration.
A member of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, Father Groody serves as vice president and associate provost of undergraduate education at the University of Notre Dame, as well as a professor of theology and global affairs at the school.
He is the author of several articles and books, including “A Theology of Migration: The Bodies of Refugees and the Body of Christ” (Orbis Books, 2022).
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OSV News: When did you first visit Lampedusa?
Father Groody: I did a lot of my research on immigrants and spirituality, and when Pope Francis was elected, he began to highlight this topic. The first place he went outside the Vatican was Lampedusa, because he had heard about the refugees (trying to reach the island). The boats weren’t seaworthy and would break apart, and people drowned.
Pope Francis was so moved by the indifference to the lives of these migrants that he went down there. He wanted to preach against the “globalization of indifference” and say, “These are human beings, they have dignity, they have value, they have worth.” He really came to speak on behalf of those whom the world considers as nobodies.
And he wanted to highlight that they are somebody, especially in the eyes of God, and that they’re connected to everybody. An important element here is that they’re also connected to the body of Christ, because they do embody the least and the last that Christ speaks about.
The altar (at Pope Francis’ 2013 Lampedusa Mass) was in the form of a boat. The crozier was made in the form of a ship’s wave (and made from the wood of a migrant boat). So I became very intrigued by that. I went down to Lampedusa a number of times and did research with the community there, particularly the carpenter who made those vessels. So that’s what kind of led me to go down there initially, and also figured prominently in a vision for the theology of migration.
OSV News: What are some other aspects of that theology of migration, and how does Lampedusa serve as an image of it?
Father Groody: Lampedusa, where great humanitarian concern has been shown in welcoming migrants, has been a symbol of mercy in a merciless sea of refugee travail and trauma, and it (the island) represents another way of living and being in the world.
The dominant political narrative takes us from our oneness as a human family and divides us into otherness: “us” and “them.” But the dominant theological narrative coming out of the life of Christ is moving from our otherness to oneness.
So it (a theology of migration) is a theology of communion, and I think what’s underneath Pope Francis’ and Pope Leo’s vision is that we are united as a human family under God. Our care for our brothers and sisters is part of the same body. And to tear at the life of migrants and to dehumanize them is actually to really dehumanize ourselves and deport our soul.
This (care for migrants and refugees) is not just social work. It’s actually more humanitarian concern flowing out of the dignity of the human person.
Christ himself was a migrant, and I actually speak of him as being the primordial migrant — the Son of God who left his homeland, came into our sinful and broken territory, and died on a cross to reconcile us to God, to help us migrate back to becoming citizens in God’s kingdom again. Essentially Christ is always breaking down those walls and barriers to bring us to communion, even as the political narratives are dividing us.
OSV News: The public discourse over migration can seem intractable, even among Catholics, with some stating that they would be open to accepting immigrants who arrived in the U.S. legally, and others highlighting that’s not always an option for those fleeing war, disaster and other conditions that drive people to leave their countries of origin. How do we overcome this impasse?
Father Groody: I would say migration and refugees are not the central problem. They’re symptoms of deeper problems which are driving people from their homelands, whether that be economic need, poverty, violence, persecution, instability, the inability to provide for their families.
The problem with that legal argument — and it’s all too common — is that it understands neither the law nor immigration, because (St.) Thomas Aquinas said there are actually four kinds of laws.
There are civil laws, those which are on the books, but there are (also) natural laws by which people need to be safe, provide for their families, educate, shelter and protect them.
There are divine laws, which we know through Scripture, about caring for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned and the estranged.
And there are eternal laws through which God keeps the universe in motion.
Aquinas said for there to be true peace and justice, there has to be an alignment of those laws. And when you have civil laws — in this case, “migrants, stay out” — that are at variance with natural laws, (when) people are fleeing their homelands and trying to keep their families safe, there’s going to be a collision.
And it doesn’t mean you just open the borders and disregard civil law, but it does mean that unless you see other laws at work, you actually don’t understand the issue.
The fact is that most migrants would rather stay in their homelands, and would never want to leave if they didn’t have to. Most of the developing world actually shelters the burdens of providing for refugees.
So we have to move out of this scarcity mindset into other mindsets of how we think about this. I think it’s too reductive of an analysis to say, “They should just obey the law,” because there’s no law and there’s no line to get into for these people. The current (U.S. presidential) administration has really shut down the refugee quotas even for those who qualify, who can show that their lives are in danger and they’d be killed or tortured if they’re sent back to their homeland.
(Immigration) law has to be seen in light of protecting people, and it also has to be seen in light of the universal destination of all goods, not just the right to private property.
Catholic social teaching would say that a person does have a right to migrate, even a right to cross an international border, if their family does not have sufficient means to protect, to provide (for themselves), in their homeland.
That’s an argument based on the fact that all the world belongs to God, and we’re stewards and not owners. There can’t be an absolute appeal to ownership or even national sovereignty when there are larger international issues of the common good.
If our job is to be conformed into the image and likeness of God, then we have no choice but to really reevaluate the way we think about things, the way we behave and especially the way we relate to one another.
That’s why the bigger journey is not “What do we do with immigrants?” The bigger journey is “How do we move towards communion with God and with one another?”
If we don’t see that we are connected to these people who are labeled as “different” or “other,” then we’ve deported our soul. And we actually have bigger problems than immigration that we’re dealing with.
OSV News’ Vatican Editor Courtney Mares met Father Groody in Lampedusa before the Pope’s July 4 Mass. Watch the full video here.
Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.
