Pope Francis criticized the Trump administration’s stance on migrants, calling the president’s pledge of mass deportations “a major crisis.”
In a strongly worded letter to the U.S. Catholic bishops, Francis wrote that it’s important for Catholics to disagree with any measure that identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.
Francis also said that deporting people — who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, exploitation and persecution — “damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”
The letter also appears to reply to remarks by Vice President Vance in which he said people should care for their family, communities and country before caring for others.
Francis instead wrote that people should meditate on love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” the pope writes.
The pope is the second high-ranking Catholic leader to criticize Vance, who is Catholic.
After Vance accused the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops of resettling immigrants to receive federal funding, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan called the vice president’s remarks “scurrilous” and “nasty.”
“You want to come look at our audits, which are scrupulously done? You think we make money caring for the immigrants? We’re losing it hand over fist … we’re not in a money-making business,” Dolan said.
