Year 2026

POPE LEO XIV SENDS OUT A CRY FROM THE HEART OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

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Lampedusa  ||  | 04 July 2026
Tutte le Attività (EN) - Anno 2026

A delegation from the “United States of the World” welcomed Pope Leo XIV, who, upon his arrival in Lampedusa, immediately went to the local cemetery to pay his respects at the graves of the faceless and nameless migrants, before which he remained to pray in silence and lay a wreath of flowers.
“I was deeply moved,” said Secretary-General Michele Capasso, “when I saw the Pope standing before the burial niches that we set aside years ago for nameless migrants, and then I recalled Pope Francis’s visit, thirteen years ago, at this very time of year.”
This was immediately followed by a visit to the Porta d’Europa, where he met with a migrant family and was met with the powerful image of Pope Leo standing on the rocks facing the sea, where the horizon looks towards the lands from which our brothers and sisters come – those forced to leave their homes in search of the freedom and dignity denied to them.
Pope Prevost then blessed a memorial stone renaming the Molo Favaloro as the “Molo Pope Francis”.
In this strip of land closer to Tunisia than to Italy, Pope Leo XIV chooses to let his words fade away to make way for the weight of memory and grief: he remains silent throughout the first, brief part of the journey. The part that takes him to the cemetery at Cala Pisana, then to the Porta d’Europa and finally to the Molo Favaloro, which has today been renamed Molo Pope Francis. There are no words, no speeches and certainly no proclamations – especially political ones – from the Pope; there is a suspended void, set against the stark reality of the migration routes. This reality is told by the crosses made from the wood of the boats salvaged from crossings across the Mediterranean, bearing no names, dates or faces; it is told by the bowls, hats and everyday objects embedded in the ceramic and galvanised iron blocks of the Porta d’Europa; and it is told by the faces – some smiling, some not – of the twenty migrants brought out today from the hotspots and led before the memorial dedicated to Pope Bergoglio.