"Each country also belongs to the foreigner"
A short catechesis on the rights of immigrants
The dignity of immigrants and refugees has been one of Pope Francis’s most consistent talking points throughout his pontificate. Francis is very aware of how war, violence, and poverty have displaced millions of people around the globe as well as rising xenophobia and Nationalism that scapegoats vulnerable immigrants. In his 2020 social encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, he addressed the rights of migrants head-on.
In chapter three of that encyclical, the pope laid out a Christian anthropology that’s founded on each person’s infinite dignity and vocation to love others. From this foundation, before directly addressing the right of migrant, the pope spoke about the doctrine of the universal destination of goods.
This teaching isn’t new. Popes have written about the universal destination of goods pretty explicitly for the past century. This doctrine is based on Scripture, the Church Fathers, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
In a nutshell, Francis expressed the universal destination of goods by saying, “The world exists for everyone, because all of us were born with the same dignity” and “the Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable” for “the right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods” (FT 118, 120).
The pope is drawing from St. Thomas Aquinas who said, “the ownership of possessions is not contrary to the natural law, but an addition thereto devised by human reason” (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 66, a. 2). In other words, private property is the most reasonable means for man to respect the universal destination of goods. In fact, when Aquinas argues for the necessity of private property, he does so on pragmatic terms (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 66, a. 2).
Simply put, private property is the most reasonable means to the end of developing and distributing the goods of the earth to all people. So while individuals have the right to private property, they don’t have the right to do whatever they want with it. The use of property must be ordered to the common good.
We have the duty to give all excess wealth, anything beyond necessity and propriety, to those in need (Rerum Novarum 22). And the state has the “right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good” (CCC 2406) by redistributing wealth from those who have excess to those who lack what’s necessary.
While Francis expressed the doctrine of the universal destination of goods in a traditional way, how he applied that teaching to the rights of immigrants was new and compelling. The pope took the principle that “the world exists for everyone” and applied it to migrants and national borders. He said (emphasis mine):
“Nowadays, a firm belief in the common destination of the earth’s goods requires that this principle also be applied to nations, their territories and their resources. Seen from the standpoint not only of the legitimacy of private property and the rights of its citizens, but also of the first principle of the common destination of goods, we can then say that *each country also belongs to the foreigner*, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere. As the Bishops of the United States have taught, there are fundamental rights that ‘precede any society because they flow from the dignity granted to each person as created by God’” (FT 124).
In other words, every person, because of their inalienable dignity, has a right to the goods necessary for “a developed and dignified life” and “the limits and borders of individual states cannot stand in the way of this” (FT 121).
While the right to migrate is very established in Church teaching, I’ve never seen it explained from the principle of the universal destination of goods. I believe by invoking this principle, Francis is inviting us to view the relationship between a state’s right to regulate its borders and a person’s right to migrate the same way we recognize the relationship between private property and the universal right to the goods of the earth. I think there are three specific ways that these issues can be compared.
The first is that just as private property and the universal destination of goods are not in competition with each other, neither are national borders and the rights of migrants. Rather, the former is in service to the latter.
The Catechism confirms this when it says that “Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions” (CCC 2241).
Notice how the right to regulate national borders is in the service of the common good. Thus any law that restricts the right to migrate must serve the common good. Secure national borders are not absolute rights. Rather, they are means to the end of facilitating the rights of persons to access the resources and security needed to live and thrive.
This understanding of Church teaching is affirmed by the Bishops of Mexico and the United States, in their document, Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope (emphasis mine):
“The Church recognizes the right of a sovereign state to control its borders in furtherance of the common good. It also recognizes the right of human persons to migrate so that they can realize their God-given rights. These teachings complement each other. While the sovereign state may impose reasonable limits on immigration, the common good is not served when the basic human rights of the individual are violated. In the current condition of the world, in which global poverty and persecution are rampant, *the presumption is that persons must migrate in order to support and protect themselves and that nations who are able to receive them should do so whenever possible*”(paragraph 39).
Second, because the goods of the earth belong to everyone, if a starving parent steals a loaf of bread to feed themselves and their children, they aren’t actually stealing. It’s not just that they aren’t culpable because of their desperate circumstances, it’s that they have a natural right to the food they need in order to live (Gaudium et Spes 69, CCC 2408 ).
Likewise, if a foreigner in search of “a place that meets their basic needs” and “where they can find personal fulfilment” (FT 129) is being unjustly prevented from legally emigrating to the United States and therefore enters “illegally,” they aren’t violating the moral law anymore than than the parent “stealing” bread. This is because “each country also belongs to the foreigner, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere” (FT 124). Or as Bishop Thomas Wenski put it, “they are not breaking the law, the law is breaking them.”
Third, ideally the state shouldn’t need to redistribute the excess wealth of private citizens in order to promote human development and insure that others have what they need to survive. The pope says, “helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work” (FT 162).
The demands of justice should compel each of us with means to use those means to promote human development without being forced to. But until that happens, we need to tax excess wealth and provide social safety nets to promote the common good (Cf. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 303).
Likewise, the pope says that, “ideally, unnecessary migration ought to be avoided” (FT 129). Nobody should feel forced to leave their place of origin and be uprooted from their family, religion, and culture (FT 38). However, until that ideal is achieved, “we are obliged to respect the right of all individuals to find a place that meets their basic needs and those of their families, and where they can find personal fulfilment” (FT 129).
By rooting the right to migrate in the universal destination of goods, Pope Francis is showing us just how contrary “my country first” Nationalism is to the Gospel. By valuing national borders over the inalienable right for every person to live and thrive we are allowing “secondary rights” to “displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant” (FT 120).
This is echoed in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2024 declaration, Dignitas Infinita. There the Church teaches (emphasis mine):
“Migrants are among the first victims of multiple forms of poverty. Not only is their dignity denied in their home countries, but also their lives are put at risk because they no longer have the means to start a family, to work, or to feed themselves. Once they have arrived in countries that should be able to accept them, ‘migrants are not seen as entitled like others to participate in the life of society, and it is forgotten that they possess the same intrinsic dignity as any person. […] No one will ever openly deny that they are human beings; yet in practice, by our decisions and the way we treat them, we can show that we consider them less worthy, less important, less human.’ Therefore, it is urgent to remember that ‘every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance’” (DI 40).
Ultimately, if we deny the inalienable dignity of migrants we undermine the foundation for our own human rights.
At the end of that third chapter of Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis says that the Church’s social teachings call “for an alternative way of thinking.” Otherwise they “will sound wildly unrealistic” (FT 127). But if we are willing to let ourselves be challenged by the Gospel, if we are willing to dream together of a world firmly grounded on the dignity of all persons, “we can rise to the challenge of envisaging a new humanity. We can aspire to a world that provides land, housing and work for all” (FT 127).
If you are looking for more resources about Catholic Social Teaching…
I can travel to your parish or diocese to present a day long retreat about Catholic Social Teaching:
https://www.practicalkerygma.com/p/what-is-life-as-christ-catholic-social
I also have a presentation specifically about Fratelli Tutti:
https://www.catholicthirdspace.com/p/brothers-and-sisters-all-7b4
I also co-wrote and edited a study guide for Fratelli Tutti, which is available for free here: https://wherepeteris.com/fratellituttiguide.pdf