Pope Francis has called US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport immigrants a “disgrace.”
The pontiff was asked during an Italian television interview about the incoming Trump administration’s plans to deport undocumented immigrants through an aggressive slate of immigration executive orders by the president-elect, who will be inaugurated Monday.
“If it is true, it will be a disgrace because it will force the poor wretches who have nothing to pay the outstanding bill. It will not do. “This is not the way to solve things,” Francis stated during the Sunday interview.
The Pope has made advocating for migrants a central part of his papacy, insisting that they be welcomed and integrated into society.
It is also a topic that Francis finds personally meaningful. In his new autobiography, the Pope described how his paternal grandparents and father planned to sail from Italy to Argentina on the Principessa Mafalda in 1927, which sank with many lives lost, but instead made a later crossing.
Francis’ appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy as the next Archbishop of Washington, DC, suggests that he is prepared to take a critical stance toward the new Trump administration.
McElroy has called mass deportations of immigrants “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”
On Sunday, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago also criticized the deportation plans. In 2016, Francis suggested that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was “not Christian” because of his anti-immigrant views.
Francis made his latest remarks during an interview with the talk show “Che Tempo Che Fa” on Nove, which is owned by CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.
During the interview, the Pope also announced that he would appoint Sister Raffaella Petrini as president of the commission that governs Vatican City State.
Petrini will succeed a cardinal in her new position, which she is expected to take in March. He appointment follows the Pope’s decision earlier this month to appoint the first female head of a Vatican department.
The Pope also revealed that his arm, which had been in a sling after being injured in a fall, is now “moving better.”