Immigration is one of the most divisive questions of our day, and the Vatican has placed itself squarely in the middle of it. One of the men now shaping Rome’s voice on migrants and refugees is an Angolan Jesuit priest, Fr. Avelino Chicoma Bundo Chico. His statements, and the Vatican’s record behind them, deserve a careful look.
Who Is Fr. Avelino Chico?
Fr. Chico is a Jesuit from the Society of Jesus’ Central Africa Province. In May 2025, shortly after his election, Pope Leo XIV appointed him an Office Head at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. This Vatican department handles what Rome calls “social justice”: migrants and refugees, poverty, human trafficking, health care, the environment and peace. Before his promotion, Fr. Chico worked as an official in the same department, concentrating on migrants, refugees and those pushed to the margins. He has written on the rights of migrants in Angola and on the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on migration.
What is “social justice”?
In Roman Catholic teaching, social justice means society providing the conditions that allow individuals and groups to obtain what is their due. In everyday political use, it usually means using the power of government to reduce inequality, through the redistribution of wealth, expanded welfare and special protections for groups considered disadvantaged.
The Bible’s call to justice is different. It is personal and impartial: judges are to favor neither rich nor poor (Leviticus 19:15), and believers are called to care for the needy through their own generosity and the church, not by handing that duty to the state.
What He Has Said About Immigration
At an international peace meeting in Rome in October 2025, Fr. Chico spoke on the question, “Is it possible to integrate migrants?” His answer centered on regularization — giving legal status to people living in a country illegally. He called it “the first step towards their integration,” and said that integration is the responsibility of the state, which should create programs to help migrants settle. He built his talk on Pope Francis’s four words for migrants: welcome, protect, promote and integrate.
In an earlier paper on the Church’s teaching about migration, he presented a “right to migrate” grounded in human dignity, quoting popes from John XXIII to Francis. He urged the Church to press governments to “open up legal corridors for emigration,” called for international cooperation in managing migration, and criticized “unilateral decisions” by individual nations. To his credit, the paper also spoke of a “right not to emigrate” — the right of people to live in peace and dignity in their own countries.
In October 2026, while visiting South Africa, he encouraged church workers serving migrants and urged them to “change the narrative about people on the move.”
Open Borders in All but Name
Fr. Chico has never used the words “open borders.” But consider what his position means in practice. A person crosses a border illegally. Instead of facing the consequences of breaking the law, he is to be given legal status, and that unlawful entry becomes “the first step” in his integration. The government is then responsible for programs to settle him. The only response to illegal entry is to make it legal after the fact.
What is missing is just as telling. In none of these statements does Fr. Chico address a nation’s right to limit and regulate who enters its territory, or its right to remove those who enter unlawfully. A policy that rewards illegal entry with legal status, discourages enforcement, and treats national decisions as “unilateral” may not be called open borders, but it produces the same result. Every amnesty becomes an invitation to the next wave of illegal crossings.
The Vatican’s Record
Officially, Rome affirms that nations may control their borders. Its Catechism says that wealthier nations should welcome foreigners “to the extent they are able,” but also that governments may set legal conditions on immigration. In November 2025, Pope Leo XIV said, “No one has said that the United States should have open borders,” and, “I think every country has the right to determine who enters, how, and when.”
Yet the practice tells a different story. In February 2025 Pope Francis wrote to the American bishops condemning the Trump administration’s deportations, warning that a policy “built on the basis of force” “begins badly and will end badly.” In the same breath he acknowledged the right of a nation to defend itself and to regulate “orderly and legal migration,” but the weight of his letter fell against enforcement. Pope Leo has continued the same course. He called the treatment of migrants in the United States “extremely disrespectful” and urged all Americans to listen to the U.S. bishops, who have strongly opposed mass deportations. He chose to spend this past July 4th, America’s 250th Independence Day, on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a landing point for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, praying for migrants who died seeking a better life, before visiting the U.S. ambassador later that day. And he appointed Fr. Chico to help lead the very office that speaks for Rome on migration.
The pattern has held for many years: the right to control borders is acknowledged in principle, while every real effort to enforce them is opposed in practice. A right that may never be exercised is no right at all.
Other Vatican News
- A Latin American tour. On November 6, Pope Leo XIV left Rome on a 12-day journey to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, visiting ten cities and giving about 40 addresses. The trip is a homecoming of sorts, since he served for years as a missionary and bishop in Peru. The Vatican says he is fit to travel after surgery in October.
- Ukraine. On October 16, from his hospital room, the pope telephoned Vladimir Putin and asked for a ceasefire in the Russian-held town of Oleshky, where about 2,000 civilians, including 40 children, were trapped without food. A short local ceasefire was announced on October 23 to allow aid in and civilians out. The White House credited First Lady Melania Trump with mediating it; the Vatican credited the pope.
- The Iran war. The pope has been one of the war’s sharpest critics, calling President Trump’s warning that “a whole civilization will die” “truly unacceptable.” After Vice President Vance defended the war using Rome’s own “just war” teaching, the pope replied, “There is no just war there.” In his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas he went further, calling the just war theory “now outdated” — a striking break with centuries of Roman Catholic teaching.
- China. On November 5 the pope sent a video message to a Rome conference marking 100 years since the first Chinese bishops were consecrated, stressing “communion in diversity” as the Vatican continues its courtship of Beijing.
- Wealth. The pope’s prayer intention for November is “for the proper use of wealth,” asking forgiveness for hoarding rather than sharing.
- Persecuted Christians. November is “Red Week,” when churches and landmarks are lit in red for persecuted Christians. According to Aid to the Church in Need, 413 million Christians live in countries with serious violations of religious freedom, and churches were damaged or destroyed in 62 countries. Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Burkina Faso and Cameroon are among the worst; in Nigeria, pastors continue to be shot and worshippers kidnapped.
A Christian Conclusion
Scripture commands kindness to the stranger. Israel was told to love the stranger “as thyself,” remembering that they had been strangers in Egypt. Christians must never treat any person, whatever his legal status, with cruelty or contempt, and churches should be ready to help the needy who come to their doors.
But the same God who commands love for the stranger also gave one law for the stranger and the native alike. He determined the bounds of the nations, and He ordained civil rulers to punish evildoers. Loving our neighbor does not require a government to reward lawbreaking, and enforcing just laws is not cruelty. Personal compassion and the government’s duty to keep order are not enemies.
Above all, the Church was never sent to be a political lobby or a department of social programs. Rome’s “social justice” puts the structures of this world at the center, and its offices, its encyclicals and its diplomats speak of almost everything except the Gospel of free grace. Christ sent His people to preach the Gospel to every creature, not to redesign the immigration laws of the nations. The deepest need of every migrant, and of every native, is not a new legal status but a new heart. Christians are themselves strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and our true citizenship is in heaven.
Sources: Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar, May 23, 2025; Fr. Avelino Chico, S.J., “Is it possible to integrate migrants?” Sant’Egidio, October 27, 2025, and “Modern migration trends and the Church’s responses”; Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, October 6, 2026; Vatican News; America Magazine; Al Jazeera; CBS News; NPR; Aid to the Church in Need. Written by the Webmaster, November 6, 2026.