“Migration” features, albeit in limited fashion, in Pope Leo XIV’s Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi Te. Of the three paragraphs that mention it, two are historical. I am not a professional historian but I think I know enough to ask some questions about what those two paragraphs really support versus what some think they support. In terms of history, they are somewhat selective, which suggests that they are there less for their probative value than the association some want to force between them and liberal immigration regimes. That’s a bit disturbing because — especially with the focus on “doctrinal development” throughout history — that treatment of the history of “migrants” is debatable. (I’ve already introduced my overall concerns with the document here.)

The first paragraph (#73; Dilexi Te can be found here) associates migration with “the history of the People of God.” One could say the same thing of sin: it, too, is associated with “the history of the People of God.” All either example means is that both things were factually connected with God’s activity in salvation history. The facticity demands evaluation. In the case of “sin,” it was bad (or, at best, a “happy fault”). So, there is no necessary basis to pronounce migration and salvation history “good”—or “bad.” It simply was. If ultimately there’s no guilt by association, neither is there goodness.

An allusion to antiquity usually occurs to trot out Exodus 23:9 (“do not oppress the alien”) as a proof-text. The caricature is that the Bible did not regard migration as a “big thing.” So, let’s just pluck one Biblical line to employ as a slogan to critique modern immigration laws.

Any competent Biblical scholar would say that proof-texting is a misuse of Sacred Scripture. It is also primarily Protestant — fundamentalist, in fact — not Catholic. Biblical scholars would say that one must consider how a particular verse fits within the whole of Sacred Scripture (which also incorporates taking historical account of those passages).

As I’ve elsewhere pointed out, commenting on the adequacy of Old Testament rules regarding foreigners, St. Thomas Aquinas notes that Israel’s approach to them was more complex than “don’t oppress foreigners!” It could be tolerant, but it also could limit their residence within Israel if their lack of assimilation was seen as impairing Israel’s spiritual unity. I am not arguing for Thomas as historian; I am only saying he recognized Exodus 23:9 was not the exhaustive Biblical commentary on behavior towards foreigners.   

Were movements of peoples in the ancient world different, perhaps even more permissive, than today? Yes. But unless one imagines that historical development does not matter, so what? Passports and visas may not have existed then as they do now, but does that mean we must revert to pre-1648 models, pretending the Westphalian state system does not exist?

Passports and visas may not have existed, but sovereignty surely did. It’s why “as he was about to enter Egypt” (Ex 12:11) Abram told Sarai to tell Pharoah she was his sister, not his wife. Abram understood Pharoah could eliminate him once he crossed the border (i.e., “as he was about to enter Egypt” and came under Pharoah’s sovereignty, with life and death implications).

After Moses killed an Egyptian abusing a Hebrew, he feared Pharoah’s justice because “he tried to have him killed” (Ex 2:15). For those who actually read the Bible, what happened is tersely explained: “Moses fled from Pharoah and settled in the land of Midian” (ibid). He did not stay in Egypt where he was known and where by Egyptian law he could be arrested. He became a fugitive who removed himself from Pharoah’s sovereignty to a place where that jurisdiction did not extend. Was that a modern border? No. Did it have the same attribute of being under sovereignty A versus B? Yes.

For those who recall that episode more from Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments, the same point is made. After the dramatic trial where Pharoah “strikes the name of Moses from every pylon in Egypt,” Moses is sent into exile. Ramses is shown taking Moses to the customs point where he drives his erstwhile brother into Sinai “to rule over scorpions.” That scene clearly anachronistically embodies the modern border but it makes the point: you are either under the rule of a “country” or you are not.

In sum, even in the Fertile Crescent peoples’ movements were not just self-willed decisions of foot-free individualists roaming endless highways at will.

Dilexi te’s second paragraph citing history (#74) — about Mother Cabrini and Bishop Scalabrini — seems to have been inserted to make a specifically American point. That’s somewhat odd, inasmuch as opposition to large-scale illegal immigration is growing as much in Europe as in the United States. The difference could be that, whereas European opposition to illegal migration is popular but lacks support from European Union institutions, in the United States popular opponents of illegal immigration also have the active support of the current Trump administration. One also suspects that Cabrini and Scalabrini were added because they were involved in South America (Dilexi te started out as Francis’s document, while Leo has roots in both North and South America).

One should again ask whether the data fully sustains the point it is supposed to bear. Do I imagine Mother Cabrini asking about the immigration status of the children she cared for? No. Do I think Bishop Scalabrini asked about it when he visited Italian immigrants in America and Brazil at the turn of the 20^th century? No. But the historical situation in which their work took place was qualitatively different from today’s. America experienced mass immigration from 1880-1920, driven in large part by American industrial need for factory labor. The door of the United States was broadly open, but it was not unrestricted. Those Italian immigrants did not stop at the Statue of Liberty to lay a wreath; Ellis Island was a port-of-entry inspection station where the ill, paupers, and those unfit to support themselves (i.e., work) and lacked sponsors were turned around. U.S. immigration recorded who entered (it’s how my family name first got mangled from Grądalski to Grondelski).

Most of the immigrants whom Mother Cabrini schooled were, therefore, likely here legally. Most of the immigrants whom Bishop Scalabrini met likely were, too.

While we are talking about history and episcopal concern for poor migrants, let’s remember what was happening in the Catholic hierarchy of the United States at that time. The bishops of this country were very much preoccupied, in the face of Protestant discrimination, with making the point that good Catholics were good Americans. It’s why Italian Catholics showcased that perpetrator of intercontinental “genocide,” Christopher Columbus, on the 1892 quadricentennial of his landing in the Americas: America “began” with a Catholic. It’s why the bishops were intent — some might even say hell-bent — on assimilating their immigrant flocks. It explains why many were so hostile to ethnic parishes: “you’re gonna become an American Catholic, sure and begorrah!” they harrumphed.

Against that background, are we to imagine that those bishops — eager to prove Catholic “loyalty” to America — would have countenanced ecclesiastical institutions aiding or abetting large-scale support of illegal immigration? If that support became institutionalized on the scale it exists today, it would have undermined what those bishops were trying to accomplish. Scalabrini spent most of his career as a diocesan bishop in northern Italy. Upon traveling to the United States, he met President Theodore Roosevelt roughly a month after TR’s inauguration. Do you believe John Ireland would have countenanced institutionalized abetting of mass illegal immigration? Do you believe conservative Archbishop Michael Corrigan (an Ireland critic) would not have raised concerns with another papal Leo about an Italian suffragan bishop roaming New York to meet illegal immigrants?

Even if immigrant access to the U.S. from 1880-1920 was liberal, it doesn’t mean the immigrants flooding the Church were welcomed by Protestant America. Mostly Catholic Southern and Eastern Europeans were not in the same categories as Anglo-Saxon or Nordic stock (as post-1920 immigration quotas made clear). Whether or not that was just, America’s Catholic bishops knew that. It is inconceivable they would have upset the apple cart of their efforts to make Catholics acceptable in America by abetting illegal immigration.

Those historical facts are not erased by Dilexi te’s convenient historical fiction that omits any discussion of the difference between legal and illegal “migrants.”

Dilexi te cites various historical events but those events do not necessarily bear the full historical weight permissive migration advocates want to lay on them. Let’s not engage in anachronism, i.e., reading contemporary issues into historical events in contexts and legal orders that appear different, sometimes markedly so.