A ‘Grave Sin’? Balancing the Pope’s Statement on Migration, by Phil Lawler

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, Aug 29, 2024

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org.

At his regular weekly audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis once again prompted howls of protest when he said that efforts to repel immigrants were “a grave sin.”

The angry reactions were understandable, because the Pope’s remarks were inflammatory. But most of the protests were off-target, because they missed the main thrust of the Pope’s Wednesday talk. If we are hoping for a serious debate on the crisis of migration, and we deplore the Pope’s incautious rhetoric, we should ourselves be careful to dispute what he said—not what he did not say.

At his audience the Pontiff broke from his usual pattern of giving catechetical talks (recently he has been speaking about the Holy Spirit), to talk about the plight of those who “are crossing seas and deserts to reach a land where they can live in peace and safety.” …

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