A spirited fight: Pope Francis, Trump trade barbs
Pope Francis thrust himself into the heated American presidential campaign Thursday declaring Donald Trump is “not Christian” if he wants to address illegal immigration only by building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump fired back ferociously, saying it was “disgraceful” for a religious leader to question a person’s faith.
The rare back-and-forth between pontiff and presidential candidate was the latest astonishing development in an American election already roiled by Trump’s freewheeling rhetoric and controversial policy proposals, particularly on immigration. It also underscored the popular pope’s willingness to needle U.S. politicians on hotbutton issues.
Francis’ comments came hours after he concluded a visit to Mexico, where he prayed at the border for people who died trying to reach the U.S.
While speaking to reporters on the papal plane, he was asked what he thought of Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall along the entire length of the border and expel millions of people in the U.S. illegally.
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” he said. While Francis said he would “give the benefit of the doubt” because he had not heard Trump’s border plans independently, he added, “I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that.”
Trump, a Presbyterian and the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, responded within minutes.
“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” he said at a campaign stop in South Carolina, which holds a key primary on Saturday.
“I am proud to be a Christian, and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”
Trump also raised the prospect of the Islamic State extremist group attacking the Vatican, saying that if that happened, “the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened.”
Francis, the first pope from Latin America, has been a vocal proponent of compassionate immigration policies. In an address to Congress during his visit to Washington last year, he urged lawmakers to respond to immigrants “in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal.”
He also irked Republicans on the same trip with his forceful call for international action to address climate change. His comments prompted some GOP presidential candidates to suggest the pontiff stay out of politics.
The exchange between the Pope and Trump came as Republicans face South Carolina’s high-stakes primary on Saturday. Trump holds a 19-point lead over Ted Cruz among those likely to vote in the primary, with Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush locked in a close race for third and John Kasich showing no signs of a surge. A Bloomberg Politics poll conducted Feb. 13-16 shows Trump dominating the field across virtually all demographic groups, and doing even better than Cruz among those who say they are either very conservative or evangelical Christian.
Meanwhile, on the papal plane, Pope Francis also suggested that women threatened with the Zika virus could use artificial contraception, saying there’s a clear moral difference between aborting a fetus and preventing a pregnancy.
Francis drew a parallel to the decision taken by Pope Paul VI in the 1960s to approve giving nuns in Belgian Congo artificial contraception to prevent pregnancies because they were being systematically raped.
Abortion “is an evil in and of itself, but it is not a religious evil at its root, no? It’s a human evil,” he said. “On the other hand, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one (Zika), such as the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear.”
The Pope also said any bishop who moves a suspected pedophile priest from parish to parish should resign.
“It’s a monstrosity,” Francis said of clerical abuse. “Because a priest is consecrated to bring a child to God. And if he consumes him in a diabolical sacrifice, it destroys him.”