The Pope’s rebuff – and a reminder

Viewpoint: Washington Post (excerpted) Having belittled his Republican rivals as well as Democrats, Muslims, migrants, people with disabilities, prisoners of war, and uncountable celebrities, foreign leaders, women and journalists, Donald Trump trained his wellspring of venom on Pope Francis on the eve of the Pontiff’s trip to Mexico last week. He demeaned the Pope as a pawn of Mexico’s government and called him a “very political person.”

Now the Pope, speaking aboard the airliner carrying him back to the Vatican from his trip, has returned fire, saying, “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” He made the remark hours after praying for beleaguered migrants at the Mexican border, where Trump, who disparaged those migrants as rapists, wants to build a wall.

The pope should have been savvier, in response to a reporter’s question, than to be drawn into the mud of a presidential election. Perhaps mindful of that, he quickly tamped down his remark, declining to “get involved” with influencing Catholic voters, but adding: “I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.”

Trump’s candidacy has endured months of disapproval and condemnation from sources as varied as the British Parliament (which debated banning him from England), South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (who warned against his campaign’s appeal to Americans’ anger) and J.K. Rowling (who compared him to Voldemort, the villain of her “Harry Potter” books). He may also survive and even benefit from the Pope’s censure.

But if the Pope’s unusually frank assessment of Trump’s policy was ill-advised, it also provided a moment of clarity. As they might say in Queens, whence hail Trump, the Pope knows from Christians.

In response, Trump worked himself into a froth of indignation, saying it was “disgraceful” for the Pope or anyone else to question another’s faith.

Amid the acrimony, it’s easy to lose sight of the underlying issue — the moral obligation to treat migrants humanely. That was the pope’s message, when he visited Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso.