‘We’re all God’s children’: Do Irish Catholics share Pope Leo’s ‘liberal’ stance on immigration?

Massgoers in Dublin share their views on immigration. For some, the issue is personalEarlier this month, Pope Leo XIV urged governments to protect and welcome immigrants. Photograph: Tiziana FABI/AFP via Getty Images Her name is not Veronica but she chose it for this article. An Indian woman, she arrived in Ireland legally more than a year ago and has been working here since to fund her two children’s college education back at home. She has no family in Ireland and lives alone in Dublin’s inner city. For months now, she has been living in fear, she says. She goes nowhere alone.One night last April she was attacked by local teenagers as she returned from work at 10.30pm.“Young boys, young girls, I had almost reached home. Two boys kicked me on my back and then, out of fear, I started running,” she says.They ran after her “four or five, and they pushed me down on the road; my nose and everything was bleeding, my teeth all broken as well and then I had a black [bruise] on my abdomen. All my front teeth and my gums started bleeding, my upper lip and nose started bleeding, blood all over my face; I was badly hurt. Thank God I was wearing gloves and a jacket which covered my hands. These hands were saved, and my head was saved because I was wearing a cap”, she says.READ MORESome passersby came to her aid and offered to call an ambulance, but Veronica was concerned she would have to pay for the call-out. She went home. “I didn’t tell anybody. I couldn’t even talk, the pain was terrible.”Veronica is a regular churchgoer at Our Lady of Lourdes Church on Dublin’s Seán McDermott Street. She was doing a reading at Mass there shortly after the attack when people noticed her injuries. They took action. “Sr Monica [Kelly] took me to the police station, made an appointment with the dentist.” They also helped fund her medical expenses.Veronica was speaking to The Irish Times at the inner-city church last Tuesday after 10am Mass. She recounted her experience at a time when the Catholic Church is pushing back strongly against anti-immigration rhetoric in Ireland and internationally.Earlier this month, Pope Leo XIV visited the Italian island of Lampedusa to honour migrants who died at sea and to urge governments to protect and welcome immigrants. At the same time, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell, lamented that “the streets of our cities and towns have witnessed the mobilisation of hatred and rejection”. Farrell highlighted the way in which Irish people found “safe haven overseas” for generations. “How ironic, how shameful, if we create a society that denies the humanity of others who seek the same here,” he said.Pope Leo XIV walks through the arch of the monument Door of Europe - Porta d'Europa, made by italian artist Mimmo Paladino, during his visit to Lampedusa island, south of Sicily, in July 2026. Photograph: Tiziana FABI/AFP via Getty Images Ireland’s Catholic bishops have clashed directly with the Government on the issue, describing provisions in the International Protection Act 2026 requiring successful asylum applicants to wait for two years before they can apply for reunification with loved ones as “anti-family”. The new law “favours firmness over fairness”, the bishops said through their migrant and refugee council.But how do ordinary Catholics feel about the issue, and are they glad to see the church taking such a firm stance? The Irish Times spoke to Massgoers in Dublin’s north inner city, an area with one of the highest concentrations of immigrants.Sr Monica Kelly is a Columban sister who lives in the city. She served in South Korea for 24 years. “I’m as long now in the inner city as I was there,” she says.She acknowledges “of course” there is an immigration problem in Dublin. “A good example is right here beside me,” she says, indicating Veronica.“The fear is still with her. Trying to come home from work, she has to wait to see will someone be around to accompany her. This is what’s going on this very day,” Kelly says. Migrants are “doing the work that our own people won’t do here. We were emigrants ourselves, and here we are now – it has turned around. There’s no one to do the ordinary work.”The rise in immigration “is a bit of a problem because the Government haven’t been able to deal with their own people, and housing, and all of these things, so naturally enough it becomes more of a pressure. But we can’t blame the immigrants; they’re the ones that keep our activities going.”Regarding the asylum process, she says the “regulations are not great. They are obviously not well organised, and it seems people are getting in [to Ireland] other ways too.” Another regular Mass attendee at Seán McDermott Street is Ester Donnelly (84), originally from the area but now living in nearby Summerhill. “It’s very quiet up there. You know there used to be riots and all, nothing like that, all settled.” There were “no problems” with immigrants living in the area. In her view “we all have to live; we’re all God’s children”. At St Saviour’s Church on Dominick Street, the congregation for 11am Mass was a similar mix of migrants and Irish people as at Our Lady of Lourdes. When asked whether the church had adopted a too liberal approach to immigration, Pat O’Donoghue said: “The church would always tend to err on the side of mercy and openness.”St Saviour's Church, Dublin. While this church was built in the late 19th century, the first priory dates to the 1200s Pope Leo’s visit to Lampedusa “was lovely to see”, said O’Donoghue, who lives in Wexford but regularly attends Mass in Dublin when working in the city. It was “a great witness to what Christianity stands for”. He was “happy that the Pope went and spoke, I suppose, a little bit more on the liberal side”.His own view “is that there has to be some system in place that our welcome and our openness isn’t abused. There has to be some sort of control.” As regards the harder line on immigration taken by the Government, he felt Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan “is trying hard, and I do think he’s genuinely trying to, because obviously our infrastructure is limited, the strain on everything, GPs and so forth. Especially in rural areas where there tends to be space for these people, the services are already stretched.”On the proposal to send migrants to a third country, he noted how “the Taoiseach rowed back on that a little bit. I must say I’d find it very hard to decide which side I’d be on in that. It’s probably a little bit harsh. For people coming here to find a better life, it’s not good for them either to be in a hotel somewhere. It’s not good for anybody as the systems are stretched.”Overall, he felt “the whole system of processing their applications seems to be a bit slow and maybe that’s where it needs to be ramped up”.After 1pm Mass at the St Francis Xavier Church on Gardiner Street, Iva Beranek said: “Every person has dignity, that’s our Catholic view, regardless of who they are or where they came from, what they are doing even. I think the Church is affirming that, and Ireland is a nation of emigrants. So I think it should be very Irish, not only Catholic, to be welcoming.”From Croatia, she has been in Ireland for 21 years, and became an Irish citizen since 2022. On first arriving here, she found Ireland “extremely welcoming”, but there has been a change in recent years. “I am occasionally a little bit more wary to say where I am originally from. I’d say the Irish are still welcoming, but there is fear and sometimes, out of fear, we react in a way that is opposite to welcoming.”For Veronica, the fear is very real. The teenagers who attacked her “are still there. They just come next to you on a bike, throw bottles, say something”. About a month ago she was “out for a walk and a man kicked me on the leg as he passed. It’s so scary to be alone. I like going out but I cannot. I’ve no family, friends. I’m alone here.”IN THIS SECTION