In an interview with Vatican News, Michele Pistone, law professor at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law, and founding faculty director of Villanova’s just-launched Mother Cabrini Institute on Immigration, explains concrete efforts, also to help rediscover the humanity of immigrants whom we so often welcome into the most intimate areas of our lives, like caring for our children and elders.
By Deborah Castellano Lubov
“Universities can play a unique role in educating people and doing solid research on immigration. I mean, I think that we all recognize that we need to come up with new solutions for immigration,” says Michele Pistone, a law professor at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law, and a founding faculty director of Villanova’s just-launched Mother Cabrini Institute on Immigration.
The Institute is a new initiative dedicated to research and action on migration inspired by the life and legacy of the patron saint of migrants, Francesca Cabrini. The initiative embraces Villanova’s Augustinian values of Veritas, Unitas, and Caritas and is aligned with the University’s “Rooted. Restless.” Strategic Plan. It carries forward the foundational work of Cabrini University and its Center on Immigration.
The launch of the Mother Cabrini Institute at the Vatican on Tuesday was attended by academic and religious leaders, including Fr. Joseph Farrell, Prior General of the Augustinian Order, who commended its efforts.
Felt personally called to be part of solution
Dr Pistone hailed the source of the venue for this type of research.
“What better place to be doing this,” she marveled, “than from a university where we can study it, where we can be active on the ground, so learn through our experience, practical application of things, and also where we can teach students, like the future leaders of the of our country, of companies, and just kind of help them to understand the immigrant experience.”
The legal expert also discussed her participation in ‘Refugees & Migrants in Our Common Home’ event, also taking place in Rome.
‘Refugees & Migrants in Our Common Home’
From October 1–3, 2025, ahead of the Jubilee for Migrants (October 4–5), Rome will host ‘Refugees & Migrants in Our Common Home,’ the first in-person global gathering of a three-year initiative uniting higher education institutions, NGOs, and community partners to address the urgent realities of migration and displacement.
Organized by Villanova, the Summit will convene over 225 registered participants from more than 40 countries. Together, they will co-create multiple university-focused Action Plans rooted in education, research, advocacy, and service with migrants and refugees to strengthen coordinated, compassionate, and long-term academic responses for the future.
“I am so excited about this project,” she said, recalling, “I was sitting in Clementine Hall a few years ago when Pope Francis called on colleges and universities to do more recent research teaching and social promotion on migrants and refugees. I was in the front row, and I felt it was like he was talking to me. And I’m a senior academic, the person at Villanova who’s been doing immigration the longest, and I felt called, personally called, to become part of the solution.”
Migrants often trusted with most intimate aspects of our lives
Following her work with the MIT Systems Awareness Labs, Professor Pistone stressed the need to identify and understand “what are people’s mental models and look at a system from the perspective of the mental models.”
In particular, with immigration, she lamented, there is a mental model right now of immigrant as criminal, immigrant as someone who we should be afraid of, immigrant as someone who’s trafficking, who’s trafficking in drugs, who’s trafficking in humans.
And yet, she countered, we know that know immigrants, and they are the people who we trust with some of the most intimate parts of our lives.
“Immigrants,” the academic recognized, “are taking care of our children in daycare centers. Immigrants are taking care of our elderly in hospitals, in facilities. Immigrants are cleaning our homes. We’re inviting them into our homes. We’re inviting them into the most intimate parts of our lives.”
“We know who they are, and yet the media is like creating this image that’s so contrary,” making it “really hard for people to see the humanity,” and thus she says, “that’s part of what we need to do through this project.”
Interdisciplinary approach focusing on four pillars
This conference is really more than a conference. “It’s a project where we’re bringing together people from all over the world to come up with solutions and to, work together collaboratively, understanding that migration is complicated.”
It’s interdisciplinary by nature, and it really help it really calls us to understand migration from so many different international perspectives, all of whom are working toward systems change. “Even before we met in person, we’ve had all these virtual events that have brought people together.”
There are four active working groups that are working on the four pillars of teaching, research, advocacy, and service with migrants and refugees, all of whom have met with conference participants virtually at least three times leading up to the conference.
Draft action plans
Having already built community, she said, “the goal is really to leave the conference with draft action plans for how we as a community can react to the signs of our times and really be forward thinking.”
Pistone explained the project’s collaboration with MIT’s Systems Aware Awareness Lab, noting that MIT has been studying systems change, and has tools, mechanisms, and activities that help communities think about how to make systemic long-lasting change.
Therefore, she expressed they are fortunate to receive the benefit of those tools and the leadership, including the Lab’s Dr. Alana Cook’s expertise, for this community.
Ambassadors for the cause
“It’s just been such a great collaboration, getting to really think about what are the underlying mental models and structures that have kind of led to where we are and trying to think about how we can start at that level to rethink for the future.”
The law professor observed it is a growing community, sharing that some 250 people here in Rome for, for the launch of this initiative, but we’re going to continue to work, virtually and host regional events around the world and continue to bring people in.
“My message to the people who are here for the conference is that they’re ambassadors and that their role is to go back into their communities and bring more people into the project,” that she expects to grow in the years to go.
Bringing teachings on ground
“This is a conference that I started planning more than a year ago. And, then when Pope Leo was elected, I just felt like this is the moment that we need to be doing this work. It feels for me very much like it’s a calling and that I’m, a ‘vehicle,’ but it’s bigger than me.”
She expressed gratitude for Pope Leo’s interest in meeting with them to discuss the momentous issue and interest in collaborating with him and the Augustinians to “bring those teachings to life, on the ground.” “That’s my goal,” she said.
Recalling the energy around Villanova’s campus when their alumnus was elected Pope, she remembers, “The bells rang for the longest time. It was so beautiful. It was so beautiful. And there was just a sense of euphoria and just surprise. Right? Like, he wasn’t on the shortlist of the New York Times or some of the other publications. So it was really special and such a good choice for this time. I just, I think, wow.”
The ‘Refugees & Migrants in Our Common Home’ event is sponsored by The Mother Cabrini Institute on Immigration, in partnership with the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the International Federation of Catholic Universities, the Fondazione Agostiniani nel Mondo, Jesuit Refugee Service, Jubilee 2025, MIT Systems Awareness Lab, Scalabrini International Migration Institute (SIMI), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, Migration and Refugee Services (USCCB).
