Pope Francis said Donald Trump’s plans to deport illegal migrants from the US would be “disgraceful” if they came to fruition.
Speaking to an Italian TV program from his residence in the Vatican, Francis said that if the plans go ahead, Trump will make “the poor who have nothing pay the bill”.
“That’s not right. That’s not how problems are solved,” he said.
Trump has promised to begin the largest-ever deportation of undocumented immigrants in US history shortly after he took office.
In a message he shared with Trump on Monday, Pope Francis sent him “heartfelt greetings” and called on him to lead a society where “there is no place for hatred, discrimination or exclusion” and promotes “peace and reconciliation among people.”
It is known that the Pope cares a lot about the issue of migrants. During a public audience in August last year, he said that “systematic work by all means to expel migrants” is a “grave sin”.
In 2016, before the first presidential election in which Trump won, Pope Francis said that “a person who thinks only about building walls … and not about building bridges, is not a Christian.”
Speaking about Trump’s promise to build a wall on the Mexican border to stop migrants from traveling to the US, Francis said: “I’m just saying that this man is not a Christian if he said things like that. We have to see if he said things in that way and I I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Francis and Trump later met when Trump and his family visited Rome in 2017.
Ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, the Pope refused to say whether people should vote for Trump or his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, only urging people to choose the “lesser evil” according to their conscience.
During the interview on Sunday night, Francis also touched on the issue of migration to Europe, saying that there is “a lot of cruelty” and that everyone has “the right to stay at home and the right to emigrate.”
The Pope also added that some of the southern European countries that receive the most migrants “don’t have children and need labor.”
“In some of these countries there are entire villages that are empty. A good, well-thought-out migration policy would also help countries like Italy and Spain,” he said.
In the second part of the interview, Francis was asked about the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and said that he does not know why achieving peace is so difficult.
“I don’t know why … it was as if there was an international drive towards self-destruction,” the Pope said.
Franjo (88) has been in this position since 2013, when he was elected as the successor of Pope Benedict XVI.