The first American pope has drawn a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump over immigration, using his first U.S. television interview since ascending to the papacy to celebrate the very values of openness and welcome that Trump’s administration has moved to restrict. In the sit-down that aired on Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV, 70, spoke warmly of a nation built by generations of newcomers — a message that landed as anything but incidental given his repeated clashes with the White House.
Seated in the Borgo Laudato Si’ papal gardens outside Rome, Leo was asked by NBC anchor Tom Llamas what he loves about America. His answer wound through the country’s founding ideals before arriving at the one that clearly means the most to him.
The pope praised the country’s principles, freedom and opportunity, and its long record of “having invited for generations people from around the world to be part of America.” It was a pointed framing at a moment when the administration has made restricting immigration a defining feature of its agenda.
A Personal History Rooted in America’s Story
Leo grounded his remarks in his own lineage, pointing to a genealogical study conducted last year. His grandparents were immigrants, and his family tree, he noted, holds a complicated American inheritance.
“I come from a family that—my grandparents were immigrants. On my mother’s side, we have people who were both slaves and slave owners,” he said. The pope described that background as part of an experience that helps him recognize what he called one of the greatest wealths of the United States, adding that he intends to keep holding the principles that have long defined being American.
The Chicago native’s ascent to the papacy made him the first American pope in history — a distinction that gives his commentary on U.S. policy unusual weight. While NBC’s Lester Holt had spoken with Leo at a media event for global reporters last year, this week’s interview marked the religious leader’s first American television appearance since his election.
A Running Feud With the White House
The interview arrived against the backdrop of Trump’s periodic broadsides against the Catholic leader. The president has called Leo “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.” Vice President JD Vance, an adult convert to Catholicism, has also criticized the pope’s understanding of church teaching, while Leo has called the administration’s immigration policies “inhuman.”
For his part, Leo has not softened his assessment of the administration’s approach to migrants, describing its immigration policies as “inhuman.” He has insisted he holds no fear of the administration and intends to keep proclaiming the message of the gospel, which he described as the church’s central mission.
White House officials had no immediate comment on the interview.
Choosing Lampedusa Over Washington
The tension has played out in symbolic gestures as well as words. Despite the president’s harsh rhetoric, the White House extended an invitation for Leo to attend the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations in Washington. The Vatican instead announced that he would travel to Lampedusa, Italy — the country’s southernmost point and the first landfall for migrants who survive the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea.
On July 4, 2026, Leo took part in a procession and celebrated Holy Mass on the island, a decision Vatican officials framed as deliberate. Father Antonio Spadaro, who serves as undersecretary at the Vatican’s office overseeing culture and education, described the choice as an American pope opting on the U.S. national holiday not to celebrate a nation’s borders but to stand on what he called the wounded threshold of the Mediterranean. That gesture alone, Spadaro said, amounted to an unofficial statement.
Spadaro cast the trip as a counterpoint rather than a direct confrontation, arguing that it came at a moment when the United States had made the closing of its doors to migrants a banner — something an American pope understood all too well. Leo does not point fingers, Spadaro said, but reminds the world that the dignity God gives every person comes before any border.
Leo had made the same point in writing. In a letter to the United States ahead of the anniversary, he framed the issue in explicitly Catholic terms, arguing that protecting human life requires nations to receive, shelter and support those who cross borders in search of safety. He insisted that treating migrants with kindness and openness reflects the inherent worth that every individual possesses.
Taken together, the interview, the letter and the pilgrimage to Lampedusa sketch a consistent posture from the Vatican — one that answers the administration’s crackdown not with open confrontation but with a steady insistence on the moral claims of the migrant. For a pontiff who shares the president’s country of birth, the divide over what makes America great has become one of the more visible fault lines between Rome and Washington.
