Pope Francis On Tuesday a major reprimand of the plans of the Trump government for the massive deportations of migrants, and emphasized that the powerful removal of people simply robs them of their inherent dignity and “will end badly before their immigration status.”
Francis wrote a letter to our bishops in which he seemed to criticize the religious argument of vice -president JD Vance in defense of the deportation policy.
The American border Tsar Tom Homan responded to the Pope and said that the Vatican is a city state surrounded by walls and that Francis should leave him immigration enforcement to him. Homan, a Catholic, also said that Francis should concentrate on repairing the Catholic Church instead of the American immigration policy.
“He wants to attack us for securing our border. He has a wall around the Vatican, right?” Homan told reporters. “So he has a wall that protects his people and himself, but we can’t have a wall around the United States.”
Pope Franciscus is a mass for the jubilee of the armed forces in St. Peter’s Plein in the Vatican, Sunday 9 February 2025. (AP)
As the first Latin -American pope, Francis has long held the position to take care of migrants, pointing to the Biblical command to “welcome the foreign national” in calling countries to welcome, protect, promote and integrate people Those conflicts, poverty and climate disasters flee.
Francis and President Donald Trump have long had the heads about the Matter of immigrationIncluding prior to Trump’s first term, when Francis said in 2016 that everyone who builds a wall to keep migrants out was “not a Christian”.
In his letter, Francis acknowledged that governments have the right to defend their countries and to protect their communities against criminals, but said that the deportation of people who fled their country due to various difficult circumstances damages their dignity.
“That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own country for reasons of extreme poverty, uncertainty, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of Entire families, and places them in a state of special vulnerability and defenselessness, “he wrote.
Francis pointing to the book Exodus in the Bible and the Je Jesus Christ and emphasized the right of people to seek shelter and security in other countries and said that the Trump government’s deportation plan was a “great crisis”.
Anyone who has been trained in Christianity, he said, cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express his disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with crime. “
“What is being built on the basis of violence, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every person, starts poorly and will end poorly,” he continued.
Pope Franciscus calls the Trump deportation plan a ‘shame’
Pope Francis on his weekly public in the Vatican on 28 February 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The president of the American conference of Catholic bishops, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, thanked the Pope for his letter.
“With you we pray that the US government keeps track of its earlier obligations to help people in desperate need,” wrote Broglio. “I am brave about your constant prayers, so that we can find the courage as a nation to build a more human immigration system, one that protects our communities and at the same time protects the dignity of all.”
White House Pers Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week that more than 8,000 people had been arrested since Trump took office on January 20 as part of the president’s plan to hold and deport immigrants in the country, although hundreds have been arrested in the US His others are deported, are detained in federal prisons or are being held in the Guantánamo Bay Cuba detention camp.
Vance, a Catholic convert, has defended the deportation plans of the administration by quoting a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as “Ordo Amoris”, of which he said it describes a hierarchy of care: Priority to The family first, then the neighbor, community, community, fellow citizens and finally from other regions.
But Francis tried to check facts VANCE’s understanding of the concept.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that do not extend much to other people and groups in little,” Francis wrote in his letter. “The true Ordo Amoris that needs to be promoted is that what we discover by constantly meditating on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’, that is, by meditating on the love that a brotherhood builds up that is open to everyone, without exception . “
JD Vance enters the Senate Room on Capitol Hill on April 23, 2024 in Washington, DC (Andrew Harnik/Getty images)
As Homan has referred, the Vatican is a walled, 108 -hectare city state in Rome, and the recently increased sanctions for anyone who enters illegal. The law, approved in December, evokes that people up to four years of prison and a fine of a maximum of 25,000 euros, or $ 25,873, when they arrive with “violence, threat or deception”, including by avoiding security control points.
The US Bishops Conference had already released a statement in which Trump’s immigration policy was convicted after his first executive orders.
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Everyone “focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign help, expansion of the death penalty and the environment, is deeply disturbing and will have negative consequences, many of which harm the most vulnerable among us,” said the statement.
Cardinal Blase Cupich from Chicago praised Francis’s letter and told the Vatican media that it showed the Pope: “The protection and advocacy for the dignity of migrants as the leading urgency at the moment.”
The Associated Press has contributed to this report.
