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On Tuesday, Pope Francis severely criticized the policy of President Trump of mass deportation and urged Catholics to reject anti-immigrant accounts in an unusually direct attack on the US administration.
In an open letter to the American bishops, Francis said that the deportation of people who often come from difficult situations violates the “dignity of many men and women and whole families”.
The Pope wrote that he had “closely followed the major crisis which takes place in the United States with the initiation of a mass deportation program”, adding that any policy built on the force “begins badly and will end wrong”.
Francis has long been a defender of migrants and has denounced their fate a pillar of his papacy. He called the problem a “shipwreck of civilization” and spoke on several occasions against what he considers as poorly compared and non -Christian migration policies in the world.
Pope Francis had criticized Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration plans when he was presidential candidate, but the letter was one of the first public and explicit criticisms he directed against the President of the United States since elections. Experts said it was equivalent to a steep escalation of the character of the relationship between the Vatican and the US administration.
“This increases the heat of the conflict,” said Massimo Faggioli, Professor of theology at Villanova University.
Experts said that by writing an open letter, the Pope was also indirectly addressed to members of the new American administration, many of whom are Catholics, and in particular the vice-president JD Vance.
Francis seemed to give a response to Mr. Vance, who recently spoke of “the ordo Amoris” – a medieval Catholic theological concept which has established a hierarchy of duties which favors immediate obligations towards his family or his community on distant needs .
The Pope wrote that “Christian love is not a concentrated expansion of interests that extend, to other people and groups”. “The real Ordo Amoris who must be promoted,” he wrote, is “love that builds a fraternity open to everyone, without exception.”
The Pope’s letter, according to experts, is also addressed to certain bishops and Catholics who adopted a benevolent position towards President Trump.
“He wants to prevent the church from being divided into a pope church and a church in Trump,” said Alberto Melloni, church historian and director of the John XXIII Foundation for religious sciences in Bologna.
Pope Francis has already spoken out against the anti-immigration policies of Mr. Trump.
In 2016, he suggested that Mr. Trump, then presidential candidate, “is not Christian” because of his campaign promises to deport more immigrants and build a wall along the Mexico border.
Last year, Pope Francis said that the two presidential candidates were “against life” – Kamala Harris for his support for abortion rights and President Trump for closing the door of immigrants. He urged the voters to choose the “least two ailments”.
But during President Trump’s first term, Francis directed general criticism in the face of the construction of walls, but generally abstained from direct attacks against the administration.
This time, Francis did not hesitate to criticize President Trump’s policies more directly. In an Italian television program on the eve of the inauguration, he said that Mr. Trump’s expulsion, “if it is true, will be a shame.”
During President Trump’s first term, “the Vatican thought Trump was a historical error that would be corrected,” said Faggioli. “Now they know it’s a new era.”
There was no immediate comment from the White House.
In the letter, which was unexpected, Francis urged Catholics to consider human values, and not the laws or regulations, as the main compass stimulates their actions.
“Consider the legitimacy of public standards and policies in the light of the dignity of the person and their fundamental rights,” he wrote. “Not vice versa.”
He reminded Catholics that Jesus and his family were migrants in Egypt and urged “all the faithful of the Catholic Church” not to “give in to the stories that discriminate and cause unnecessary sufferings to our migrant and refugee brothers” .
Other Christian leaders have also criticized President Trump.
During the first prayer service at Washington National Cathedral last month, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, the leader of the Washington episcopal diocese, asked President Trump to have merciless immigrants, LGBTQ children and others.
The next day, Trump demanded excuses for the “so-called bishop” and “radical left line Trump hater” on his social media platform Truth Social.
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