section_path: International diplomatic role/Migrant and refugee issues
section_name: Migrant and refugee issues
paragraph_text: Migrant and refugee issues
  
  Francis made the plight of refugees and migrants "a core component of his pastoral work" and had defended their rights in dialogue both with Europe and with the United States. In 2019, he placed a statue in St. Peter's Square to bring attention to the Christian imperative involved in their situation (Hebrews 13:2). In line with this policy, Francis had criticized neo-nationalists and populists who reject the acceptance of refugees.
  
  In April 2016, Francis, along with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Ieronimos II of Athens, visited the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos in order to call the attention of the world to the 2015 European migrant crisis. There, the three Christian leaders signed a joint declaration.
  
  In February 2025, following the election to a second term of US president Donald Trump there were mass deportations and swingeing cuts to international aid by the new administration, defended by Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, by recasting the Catholic idea of ordo amoris (the right ordering of one's love) as a justification for nativism. Francis wrote what had been described as "an extraordinary and excoriating response to US bishops". He cited the parable of the Good Samaritan, described the ordo amoris as the love that "builds a fraternity open to all, without exception" and criticized the focus on solely family, community or national identity as " an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest".