Pope Leo XIV said that all peoples have “the right to live in their lands and no one can force them to forced exile, upon receiving a group of refugees in the Vatican.
“All peoples, also the smallest and the weakest, must be respected by the powerful in their identity and their rights, in particular the right to live in their lands; and no one can force them to a forced exile,” said Leo XIV in his greeting to the group of Chagos refugees, this Saturday in the Pope Room in the Vatican.
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The Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean were separated from Mauricio by the United Kingdom in 1965 in exchange for their independence. Then an American military base was installed, which forced exile to about two thousand people.
The legality of the occupation was questioned for years and, in 2019 the International Court of Justice and the UN declared illegal the British sovereignty of the islands. After negotiations that began in 2022, a treaty signed this 2025 ended the dispute.
Pope Leo XIV stressed the importance of this treaty and thanked “all the people of the parties involved who, opening their hearts, have understood the suffering of their people and have reached this agreement.”
After remembering that Pope Francis also expressed concern in 2019, Leo XIV highlighted “the determination of the Chagosian people, and in particular that of women, in the peaceful claim of their rights. The renewed perspective of his return to his native archipelago is an encouraging sign and has a great symbolism in the international scene”.
“The local church will not stop contributing its contribution, especially spiritual, as it has always done in difficult days,” said the Pope and regretted that exile “has caused a lot of suffering among you. You have known poverty, contempt and exclusion.”
To conclude and entrusting the people of Mauricio to the Virgin Mary, the Holy Father made votes for “that the Lord, with the perspective of a better future, hesses their wounds and grant them the grace of forgiveness for those who have hurt them.”
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.