Pope Leo XIV was at the Gateway to Europe on the southern tip of Lampedusa on Saturday morning when a 10-year-old boy walked up to him, handed him a football, and gave him a handwritten letter. The boy’s name is Leo.
The child had arrived on the island a decade ago, alone, after his mother died during the Mediterranean crossing. He wrote that he stopped crying only when someone gave him a ball made of paper. “From that day the ball has stayed in my heart and I have never stopped playing,” he told the Pope. “I hope with all my heart that this ball I am giving you now can reach another child and make them happy just like it did me.”
He signed the letter: Grazie, Leo.
The Pope accepted the gift with visible emotion before spending time praying alone beside the sea. The exchange was one of the defining moments of a day organized around the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.
The Gateway to Europe — Porta d’Europa — is a 16-foot ceramic and iron arch designed by artist Mimmo Paladino, inaugurated in 2008 as a memorial to the thousands of migrants who have died attempting the Mediterranean crossing. Pope Francis called the Sea "Europe's largest cemetery." The memorial stands on a rocky crag just southwest of Lampedusa Airport, near the remains of a Second World War bunker. There is no door on the portal and no barriers around it; visitors are free to walk through the opening. Its ceramic surface absorbs and reflects the light of the sun and moon, making it visible from the sea — a beacon for those arriving from Africa.
The Pope’s day had begun at the island’s migrant cemetery, where he laid a wreath of yellow and white flowers on graves marked by crosses made from the splintered wood of shipwrecked boats, pausing over the grave of a child named Joussef. He then moved to the Gateway to Europe — where he met the boy — before blessing a plaque renaming the Favaloro Pier after Pope Francis, and greeting 15cmigrants brought from the island’s Red Cross reception center.
The Mass that concluded the morning was celebrated at the Arena sports ground before a crowd of around 4,000 people, with the image of Our Lady of Portosalvo displayed on the altar. In his homily, the Pope called the welcome shown by the island’s mere 6,000 permanent residents a “miracle of compassion,” warned against building an “invisible wall” between tourists and arriving migrants, and called on European leaders to move beyond emergency responses toward comprehensive long-term migration policies. He concluded by entrusting migrants and the people of Lampedusa to the protection of Our Lady of Portosalvo, saying that every Christian community is called to become “a safe haven” for those in need.
Leo XIV’s visit followed in the footsteps of Pope Francis, who made Lampedusa the destination of his first trip outside Rome in July 2013, celebrating Mass at an altar made from a migrant boat and throwing a wreath of flowers into the sea.
But it was the boy at the Gateway to Europe who provided the day’s most lasting image. He arrived on this island with nothing but unimaginable loss. He was given a ball made of paper. But he kept it in his heart, grew up, learned to play, learned to write — and on Saturday morning he gave the best thing he owned to a man who shares his name, and asked him to pass it on to someone who needs it more.
