The Pope vs. JD Vance on Immigration

Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2025

Catholics should take seriously Francis’ letter on Trump’s ‘mass deportations.’

Pope Francis in 2013 made his first pontifical trip outside Rome to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa to “challenge our consciences” regarding “immigrants dying at sea, in boats which were vehicles of hope and became vehicles of death.” Donald Trump in 2015 descended his golden escalator to announce his candidacy for president, inveighing against Mexican immigrants as drug traffickers, criminals and rapists, noting: “Some, I assume, are good people.”

In February 2016, Francis said that “a person who thinks only of building walls, wherever it may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian.” Mr. Trump shot back, calling the papal comments “disgraceful.” That term returned last month, when the pontiff labeled the president’s designs for immigration a “disgrace.”

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