Pope Leo, Mike Johnson, and St. Augustine by Nancy Enright

Raising the question of how a genuine republic is rooted in a state of justice.

Detail from illuminated Spanish translation of Saint Augustine’s City of God, Cano de Aranda, 1446–82

Much has been written already about House Speaker Mike Johnson’s response to Pope Leo’s reflective criticisms of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The National Catholic Reporter published an op-ed by Matthew Schmalz on February 11 that makes an excellent point about how the Bible needs to be read more broadly and deeply than the “proof-text” approach Johnson used in his response to Pope Leo’s criticisms and in a longer Facebook post from several years ago to which he alluded. Schmalz points out that the individualism of Johnson’s argument (in which he states that the command in Leviticus 19:34 to “love the stranger” is meant for individuals, not the state) contrasts with the more communal and nuanced understanding of Scripture suggested by Leo’s criticisms:

Leo emphasizes that we will be judged [citing Matthew 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats] on how we treat “the least of these” among us. From a Catholic perspective, governments exist to promote the “common good.” In this instance, the use of the word “common” reinforces the belief that we are all in this together.

These exchanges (and there have been many other reactions to Johnson’s response to the pope) happened to occur around the time in the semester when the class I am teaching at Seton Hall University was studying St. Augustine’s The City of God. Pope Leo’s Augustinian identity has been key to his papacy since his first walk onto the balcony, calling himself “a son of St. Augustine.” What do Augustine’s thoughts say about the differences between Johnson’s approach and Pope Leo’s?

In The City of God, Book XIX, Augustine differentiates between the City of God and the City of Man. Both, he argues, exist on earth at the same time, with the former journeying to heaven within the parameters of the latter. The City of Man can help or hinder the flourishing of the City of God. But Augustine, who lived in the end stages of the Roman Empire, raises the question about how a genuine republic is necessarily rooted in a state of justice. Though Augustine believes in obeying just laws under the state, he discusses the need for justice to exist in a state for it even to be considered a republic. He develops his point, looking back to definitions of a republic by Cicero and Scipio. He argues:

Where there is no true justice, there can be no right. What is done by right is indeed done justly; what is done unjustly, however, cannot be done by right. The iniquitous institutions of human beings must not be said or thought to exist by right, because even those institutions say that right flows from the fountain of justice, and that what is customarily said by those who do not understand right correctly—i.e., that right is the advantage of the strongest—is false. . . . Where there is no justice, there is no republic (City of God, Book XIX, chapter 21).

So, it would seem Augustine is saying that justice must undergird the laws and even the identity of a valid republic.

Johnson’s delineation in his Facebook post of how specific commands in Scripture are directed to differing audiences (the individual, the family, the church, and the government) does not adequately reflect how all these entities interact and interconnect with each other. Augustine is tackling this idea in examining how the City of God and the City of Man connect. The individual typically exists in a family, and scriptural commands for each person should inevitably affect how that individual exists within the family structure. Similarly, the church as the Body of Christ unites in deep unity and love the individual members. The love underlying the two greatest commandments named by Jesus should inform all interactions: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’” (Matt 22:37-40). So, the Lord’s command to love the stranger, including the stipulation in Leviticus 19:34, is linked to this larger commandment to love one’s neighbor, which would apply to any and all commands involving others because on these two commandments “hang all the law and the prophets.”

We see a further application of Leviticus 19:34, which Johnson claims was not meant to apply when the Israelites were settled in their land because it was given to them while they were still journeying, in the command given later in the same book concerning their use of land once they were settled: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God” (Lev 23:22). Clearly, this command is intended for when the Israelites were harvesting in settled communities, not journeying. Ruth, the Moabitess, benefits from this command when she is allowed as a foreigner to glean in the fields of Boaz, who eventually becomes her husband (a story related in the book of Ruth). A society, indeed, can reflect the values of individuals inspired by the Lord’s command to love our neighbor or it cannot. It is hard to conceive of the Lord commanding an individual to love the stranger but being accepting of a government agency treating immigrants without dignity, humanity, or compassion, as Pope Leo and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops have criticized.

Related: “Welcoming the Stranger” by Nancy Enright (September 28, 2023)

The verse quoted by Pope Leo, Matthew 25:35 (“I was a stranger and you welcomed me),” is, in fact, part of a parable about the Last Day, when “the nations” are judged. Whether Jesus is specifically warning “nations” as a whole or individuals in this particular passage, God does judge nations as a whole, as Rodney Kennedy points out in Baptist News Global: “Despite his often-pronounced love for the Bible, Johnson skips entire passages where God judges nations. If he picked up his Bible and read only Amos 1 and 2, he would face the truth of God judging nations for abusing others.” But even if we interpret Matthew 25 as referring to individuals, as it could certainly be interpreted, and not literally to “nations,” it would be difficult to imagine how any individual who truly believes that whatever he or she does to “the least of these,” including “the stranger,” is being done to Christ himself could accept the current treatment of immigrants by Homeland Security. Individual conscience must inform how we react to how our nation’s policies impact those we are commanded to love.

Augustine specifically spoke about the treatment of immigrants in his own day. Many people were fleeing from Rome and its environs to North Africa, where he was bishop, as they were being attacked by tribes coming from the north in Europe. He sermonized at the time: “Here it is that by God’s favor we are in winter. Think about the poor, in how to clothe the naked Christ . . . Each one of you wishes to receive Christ seated in Heaven; see him now sheltering in a doorway; see him hungry, thirsty; see him poor, an immigrant [peregrinum]” (s. 25, 8). In fact, Augustine sees all of us as “perigrini,” that is, as foreigners or immigrants. An article at the official website of the Augustinian Recollects (whose news section made its final update in December 2025 after over two decades of publication) supports this with a quote from Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 40:

Therefore, faced with the phenomenon and dram of current immigration Saint Augustine reminds us of two things: first, that Christ is present in those who suffer any need through their condition of being peregrinus, that of being a stranger and finding oneself in a country where they are not citizens. Second, if Christ is present in these people, then it is important to help them and support them to meet their needs.

Let me sum up by saying no one, including Pope Leo, the bishops, or this author, is arguing for an “open border” or the admittance of violent and convicted criminals (which is certainly not an appropriate characterization of the vast majority of immigrants, despite the government’s attempts to paint them in this way) to our country. What is being argued for is a just, humane, and compassionate treatment of those our Lord has commanded us to consider as human beings, fellow brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ, Jesus himself hidden in the needy, all deserving of justice, compassion, and mercy. Augustine would agree. ♦

Nancy Enright holds a Ph.D. from Drew University. She is a full professor of English at Seton Hall University and the Director of the University Core. She is the author of an anthology, Community: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Catholic Literature and Film (Lexington Press, 2016), and co-editor with Francis Hunter of The Passion Narratives of Saints Perpetua, Felicity, and Their Fellow Martyrs (Lexington 2024). She has published articles on a variety of subjects, including the works of Dante, Augustine, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. Her articles have appeared in Logos, Commonweal, National Catholic Reporter, Christianity Today, and other venues.