One of the most urgent global issues today is the mass migration of nurses, particularly from countries like the Philippines. For decades, Filipino nurses have formed the backbone of health systems in the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and many other countries. These nurses leave their families behind to fill critical staffing gaps abroad, providing essential care in hospitals, clinics, and aged care facilities. While this migration offers economic opportunities for families back home, it also exposes nurses to enormous challenges — exploitative recruitment practices, contract violations, discrimination, family separation, and mental and physical strain.
Global health systems today depend heavily on this flow of nursing talent from the Global South to wealthier nations, but too often, the cost is borne by the workers themselves. Health workforce shortages in donor countries like the Philippines deepen as more nurses leave, putting enormous pressure on the local health system. Meanwhile, host countries often fail to ensure adequate labor protections, fair wages, or pathways to career advancement for the internationally educated nurses they rely on.
This is why the 2025 International Nurses Day (IND) theme, announced by the International Council of Nurses (ICN), is so timely and powerful: “Caring for nurses strengthens economies.” The theme shifts the focus toward the health, wellbeing, and rights of the nursing workforce itself — not just their service to patients, but their dignity as professionals. It emphasizes that when nurses are supported, protected, and valued, health systems perform better, patient outcomes improve, and economies benefit.
The ICN’s call to action challenges governments, health institutions, and society to recognize that nurses are not just tools to fix health system problems; they are human beings who require decent work, fair compensation, mental health support, continuing education, and ethical recruitment practices. For countries like the Philippines, this also means creating domestic conditions that make staying home a viable option for nurses — addressing low pay, under-resourced hospitals, career stagnation, and the lack of institutional support that pushes so many abroad.
Filipino nurses, both those working at home and those scattered across the world, need moral leadership to champion their cause. This is where the recent election of Pope Leo XIV offers a new horizon of hope. By choosing the name “Leo,” the new pope directly evokes the legacy of Pope Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum laid the foundation for Catholic social teaching on labor and the rights of workers.
Rerum Novarum, written in the context of the Industrial Revolution, made a bold moral claim: that economic systems must serve human dignity and the common good, not just profit (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2004). It defended the right of workers to organize, to receive fair wages, and to labor under just conditions. These principles remain profoundly relevant today — especially for the millions of migrant nurses who sustain global health systems but are too often invisible or undervalued.
Pope Leo XIV, as the moral voice of 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide, can shine a powerful light on the global nursing workforce, especially migrant nurses from the Global South. He has the opportunity to call for ethical recruitment, just labor conditions, and the recognition of migrant healthcare workers as vital contributors to the global common good. His voice could inspire governments, health organizations, and even employers to reform unjust practices and adopt policies that center human dignity.
For Filipino nurses scattered across the globe, the election of Pope Leo XIV offers spiritual and moral solidarity. These nurses not only provide medical care — they carry their cultural values, their Catholic faith, and their resilience into every patient interaction. Yet, they often do so under conditions of immense personal sacrifice. Pope Leo XIV can remind the world that these workers are not mere economic instruments; they are mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, and community leaders.
He can also encourage the Church itself to step forward as a source of pastoral care and advocacy. Many migrant nurses experience isolation, culture shock, and mental health struggles, far from their families and spiritual support systems. Catholic parishes, religious communities, and pastoral programs can play an essential role in providing accompaniment, counseling, and a sense of home for these modern-day missionaries of care.
Today, Pope Leo XIV has the chance to extend that vision to Filipino nurses and all migrant healthcare workers — affirming that they are worthy of dignity, justice, and compassion.
As we approach International Nurses Day 2025, the ICN’s theme and the hope sparked by Pope Leo XIV converge into a common call: caring for nurses is not just an economic strategy; it is a moral imperative. Health systems cannot flourish without the labor and expertise of nurses, and nurses cannot flourish without systems that respect, protect, and empower them.
To truly honor the contribution of migrant nurses, we must build global solidarity, reform exploitative practices, and center their wellbeing in national and international health policies. Pope Leo XIV can help amplify this call, drawing from the Church’s rich tradition of social teaching to advocate for a future where Filipino nurses — and all nurses — are valued, protected, and given the opportunity to thrive.
References:
Curran, C. E. (2002). Catholic social teaching 1891-present: A historical, theological, and ethical analysis. Georgetown University Press.
Masselink LE, Lee SY. Nurses, Inc.: expansion and commercialization of nursing education in the Philippines. Soc Sci Med. 2010 Jul;71(1):166-72. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.11.043. Epub 2010 Mar 20. PMID: 20399550.
Ortiga YY. Professional problems: the burden of producing the “global” Filipino nurse. Soc Sci Med. 2014 Aug;115:64-71. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.06.012. Epub 2014 Jun 11. PMID: 24953498.
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. (2004). Compendium of the social doctrine of the Church. Vatican Publishing House.
