Pope Francis blasted Donald Trump’s plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, calling the United States president-elect’s proposal a “disgrace.”
“If true, this will be a disgrace … This is not the way to solve things,” the pontiff said Sunday, speaking on Italian talk show Che Tempo Che Fa. He was responding to a question about sweeping immigration raids reportedly planned in Chicago in the days after Trump’s inauguration.
Trump, who will be sworn in Monday, has vowed to start deporting millions of undocumented immigrants on his first day in the Oval Office, making “the largest deportation program in American history” a signature pledge of his campaign.
This isn’t the first time Pope Francis has clashed with Trump over the Republican standard-bearer’s immigration policies.
The first Latin American pope and first non-European leader of the Catholic church in almost 1,300 years called Trump “not Christian” in 2016 over his plans to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump hit back then, calling Pope Francis “disgraceful” and a “very political person.” The two ostensibly smoothed things over in 2017 when Trump visited the Vatican in a trip he called the “honor of a lifetime.”
Pope Francis said Sunday he hadn’t spoken to Trump since the president-elect won the November election. He also called for countries with falling birth rates to accept more migrants.
“Italy has an average age of 46 … let migrants in,” he said, but added migrants must be “integrated.”
“If the migrant is not integrated, it is a problem,” he said.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who is leaving office Monday, is only the second Catholic president in history after John F. Kennedy. Biden was slated to meet Pope Francis in Rome on his final overseas trip in office but canceled the visit due to the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires.
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