ROME (AP):- Pope Leo XIV is traveling Saturday to northern Italy to pay homage to two figures of Christian devotion: St. Augustine, the inspiration for his religious order, and Mother Frances Cabrini, the patron of migrants who became the first American saint.
Leo’s day trip marks the midway point of his summer 2026 grand tour of Italy, in which the American pope has scheduled a series of Saturday day trips up and down the peninsula and its islands to get to know his new flock.
The pope’s first stop Saturday is the Lombardy city of Pavia to pray at the tomb of St. Augustine, the fifth-century titan of early Christianity who centuries later inspired the formation of Leo’s Augustinian religious order.
Leo proclaimed himself a “son of St. Augustine” on the night of his election and has cited Augustine prolifically in his first year, making clear that the saint is the guiding inspiration of his pontificate.
Augustine was born in 354 in what is today Algeria, but he lived for five years in and around Milan, where he converted to Christianity. He later became a bishop, developed a rule for monastic life and wrote some of the most important works of Western thought, including “Confessions” and “The City of God.”
In April, Leo made a pilgrimage to Annaba, Algeria, modern-day Hippo, where Augustine lived, preached and died.
Later Saturday, Leo is due to visit nearby Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, the birthplace of Mother Cabrini, the patron saint of migrants. Cabrini is well-known to many Americans for her work caring for Italian immigrants in the United States at the turn of the last century.
After she died in 1917, as a naturalized U.S. citizen in Leo’s native Chicago, Cabrini was beatified and in 1946 made a saint by Pope Pius XII. In a radio message that year, Pius called her a “heroine of modern times.”
Just last year, Leo’s alma mater, Villanova University outside Philadelphia, opened a new campus named for Cabrini and a special Institute on Immigration inspired by her service to migrants.
As the late Pope Francis did before him, Leo has embraced the Catholic Church’s Gospel-mandated call to “welcome the stranger” in his ministry to migrants. Last week, Leo spent two days in Spain’s Canary Islands, a major destination for migrants leaving West Africa, where he called for welcoming and integrating those fleeing hardship and conflict.
Leo’s next day trip is on July 4, when he heads to Lampedusa, the Sicilian island that is a major destination for migrants fleeing North Africa for Italy.
History’s first U.S.-born pope has clashed with the Trump administration over its crackdown on migrants and mass deportation program, giving added symbolic significance to his decision to spend July 4 – U.S. Independence Day in Lampedusa.
