During a visit to the Vatican last year, I was moved to tears.

It was not prompted by the pope. And no tears poured out when I prayed inside St. Peter’s Basilica. The artwork on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was awesome, but it left me dry-eyed.

The tears started on my way out, at the sight of a bronze sculpture in St. Peter’s Square.

It depicts a boat packed full of immigrants risking themselves and their children throughout history to flee to safety — Jews leaving behind Nazis; Cubans rushing from Communism; my mother leaving Panama in the 1950s to give her three children a chance to attend good schools.

The sculpture is called “Angels Unawares.” The words come from the New Testament urging Christians to welcome strangers because it can lead to being in the company of angels.

Pope Francis inaugurated the sculpture as a permanent display at the Vatican in 2019. He said he wanted it there to “remind everyone of the evangelical challenge of hospitality.”

That fits with Francis’s congressional address in 2015, the first and only papal address to Congress. He called on lawmakers to turn away from a “mindset of hostility” toward refugees and immigrants, rejecting what he called “the sins and errors of the past.”

That call for accepting immigrants as “angels,” including those who are undocumented, made Francis a political target for right-wing U.S. politicians and political commentators, even after his death. Demonizing immigrants to arouse fear is their number-one tool for winning elections.

Rep.........

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