Pope Leo XIV will accept the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia on the eve of July 4 in a remote broadcast from Rome but won’t travel to the U.S. during its 250th birthday celebrations this year.
Leo, the first American pope, will instead spend the Fourth of July on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, the arrival point for many desperate migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa.
He will be honored on Independence Mall on July 3 for “his lifelong work promoting religious liberty and freedom of conscience and expression around the world — ideals enshrined by America’s founders in the First Amendment,” the National Constitution Center said in a press release Monday.
The center awards the Liberty Medal each year to someone “of courage and conviction” who promotes liberty around the world. Past recipients include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the late civil rights leader.
Leo, born Robert F. Prevost, was raised in Chicago and attended Villanova University near Philadelphia, graduating in 1977.
He has a busy year of travel planned, including a grand tour of Italy and trips to four African nations. The Vatican has confirmed he will not travel to the United States this year, despite an invitation from President Donald Trump.
Leo has followed in his predecessor’s footsteps in highlighting the plight of migrants around the world.
Pope Francis had made Lampedusa his first trip outside Rome after his 2013 election, when he celebrated Mass there on an altar made of shipwrecked migrant boats and denounced the “globalization of indifference”— a mantra that increased tensions with the first Trump administration.
Francis visited Philadelphia during a six-day trip across the U.S. in 2015.
