Pope: Why Trump is not a Christian
Pontiff attacks tycoon’s plan for migrant wall
DONALD Trump got into a new fight last night, this time crossing swords with the Pope as the pontiff claimed the Republican presidential frontrunner ‘is not Christian’ because of his radical views on immigration.
Speaking on the papal plane after a trip to Mexico, Pope Francis attacked the Republican presidential candidate’s promises to deport more immigrants and force Mexico to pay for a wall along the 2,000-mile border.
‘A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,’ said Francis when asked about Mr Trump.
Building such a wall, he added, ‘is not in the Gospel’.
The New York tycoon wants to deport nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants, most of them Mexicans or – like the Argentine pontiff – from Latin America. Mr Trump caused outrage by claiming that Mexico sends ‘rapists’ and criminals to the US.
The Pope insisted he wasn’t trying to influence US voters but his intervention in the already highly- charged campaign provoked a furious response from Mr Trump.
‘For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,’ he said during a campaign rally in South Carolina.
Discussing the Islamic State, the bombastic billionaire said the terror group’s ‘primary goal is to get to the Vatican’. He added: ‘If and when the Vatican is attacked, the Pope would only wish and have prayed that Donald Trump would have been elected president.’
The Pope’s attack could hamper Mr Trump in his battle with conservative rival Ted Cruz for the support of evangelicals, a crucial voting bloc among Republican supporters.
Calling himself a ‘ proud Christian’, Mr Trump vowed that, as president, he would ‘not allow Christianity to be consistently weakened’ as he claimed it has been under Barack Obama’s presidency.
He accused the Pope of being a ‘pawn’ of the Mexican government, which wants ‘to continue to rip off the United States, both on trade and at the border’.
During a six-day visit to Mexico, Francis prayed at the US border and railed against Washington’s immigration policies, which he said forced many Mexicans to entrust themselves to criminal people smugglers.
The Pope, who has been dubbed anti-American by some US conservatives, celebrated Mass in Cuidad Juarez, a bastion of the drug cartels that has a reputation as the most dangerous city in the world.
Mr Trump accused Francis of hearing only ‘one side of the story’ while failing to see the crime, drug trafficking and economic damage in the US he blames on Mexico.
He insisted that the US had to ‘stop illegal immigration and crime’ and added: ‘I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico.’