4 hours ago
1
Pope Francis has sharply criticized the second Donald Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts and other policies cracking down on immigration, saying they are driving a “major crisis” that “damages the dignity of men and women”.
In the letter on Tuesday addressed to the US Roman Catholic church’s bishops, the pope pushed back against efforts to characterize all migrants as criminals – and urged people “not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters”.
“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” Francis wrote. “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”
Francis acknowledged the right of a nation to defend itself and to keep communities safe from individuals who have committed violent or serious crimes “while in the country or prior to arrival”.
But, he said that the act of deporting people who “in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, 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 particular vulnerability and defenselessness”.
He added: “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”
Francis, who has served as pope since 2013, has been a longstanding critic of Trump’s immigration policies.
In 2016, when Trump won his first presidency, the pope stated that Trump was “not Christian” in his approach and views on immigration. Trump responded and called the pope “disgraceful”.
In January, when Trump took office for his second presidency, he described Trump’s plan to deport millions of migrants as a “disgrace”.
Trump’s administration issued a series of executive actions aimed at cracking down on immigration and facilitating mass deportations. He has redirected military resources to bolster these deportation efforts and empowered US immigration officers to make more arrests, including in locations such as schools, churches and hospitals.
The White House said that more 8,000 undocumented immigrants had been arrested by federal agents since Trump retook office on 20 January. Some of these individuals are being held in federal prisons and others are being held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba.
In Tuesday’s letter, Pope Francis also appeared to indirectly address JD Vance’s defense of deportation efforts.
In January, the vice-president defended the immigration crackdown by referencing an early Catholic theological concept known as in Latin as “ordo amoris”, or “order of love”, suggesting that Catholics should give priority to non-immigrants.
The pope wrote on Tuesday: “The true ‘ordo amoris’ that must be promoted [is] … by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
David Gibson, director of the center for religion and culture at Fordham University, stated on social media that the pope’s letter “takes aim at every single absurd theological claim by JD Vance and his allies in conservative Catholicism (and the Catholic electorate)” and said that in the letter, the pope also “defends the chief target of Trumpism – the rule of law”.
In January, Archbishop Timothy P Broglio, the president of the US bishops’ conference, also put out a statement critical of Trump after he signed his initial executive orders focused on immigration, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty, and the environment.
Broglio called the actions “deeply troubling” adding that they would have “negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us”.
Also recently, the Vatican’s charity – Caritas International – condemned Trump’s plans to cut USAid. Caritas International warned that millions of people could die as a result of the US’s “ruthless” decision to “recklessly” stop USAid funding – and hundreds of millions more will be condemned to “dehumanizing poverty”.
Caritas asked governments to urgently call on the Trump administration to reverse course.
On Tuesday, the pope also named Bishop Edward Weisenburger, a Catholic prelate known for advocating for immigrants, as the new archbishop of Detroit.
During Trump’s first administration, Weisenburger suggested that Catholic border patrol agents involved in the Trump administration’s family separation policy could be denied communion, a central part of Catholic worship.
The pope also recently appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy as the new archbishop of Washington DC. McElroy has also criticized Trump’s immigration policies, though his handling of clergy abuse cases has been questioned by the survivors’ community.
During Trump’s inauguration in January, at the National Cathedral prayer service in Washington, the Episcopal bishop Edgar Budde made headlines after using her sermon to urge the president to “have mercy upon” immigrants and LGBTQ+ people.
Reuters contributed reporting
