Pope criticizes Trump’s deportation of migrants and calls it a violation of dignity

Pope Francis on Tuesday criticized severe President Trump’s policy of mass portations and called on Catholics to reject tales of immigrants in an unusually direct attack on the US administration.

In an open letter to American bishop, Francis said that the deporting of people who often come from difficult situations violates “the dignity of many men and women and of whole families.”

The Pope wrote that he had “closely followed the biggest crisis taking place in the United States at the commencement of a program of mass portions,” added that any policy built on force “begins poorly and will end poorly.”

Francis has long been a spokesman for migrants and has done it to condemn their situation to a pillar in his papacy. He has called the question a “shipwreck of civilization” and repeatedly stated against what he considers unwelcome and unchristian migration policies around the world.

Pope Francis had criticized Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration plans when he was a presidential candidate, but the letter was one of the first public and explicit criticism he has directed at the president of the United States since the election. Experts said it constituted a steep escalation in the temperament in the relationship between the Vatican and the US administration.

“It turns on the warmth of conflict,” said Massimo Faggioli, A professor of theology at Villanova University.

Experts said the pope, by writing an open letter, also indirectly approached members of the new US administration, many of which are Catholic and specifically Vice President JD Vance.

Francis seemed to give a riposte to Mr. Vance, which recently talked about “Ordo Amoris” – a medieval Catholic theological concept that established a hierarchy of duties that prioritized immediate obligations to one’s family or society over distant needs.

The Pope wrote that “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that gradually expand to other people and groups.” “The true Ordo Amoris to be promoted,” he wrote, “Love that builds a fraternity that is open to everyone, without exception.”

The pope’s letter, experts said, were also addressed to some bishops and Catholics who have adopted a benevolent attitude towards President Trump.

“He wants to avoid the church being divided into a church by the pope and a church of Trump,” said Alberto Melloni, a church historian and director of the John XXII Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna.

Pope Francis has spoken before against Trump’s anti-immigration policy.

In 2016, he suggested that Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, “is not a Christian” because of his campaign, promise to deport more immigrants and build a wall along the Mexico border.

Last year, Pope Francis said both presidential candidates were “against life” – Kamala Harris for her support for abortion rights, and President Trump for closing the door to immigrants. He urged voters to choose “less of two evils.”

But during President Trump’s first period, Franci’s general criticism instructed the construction of walls, but generally abandoned direct attacks on the administration.

This time, Francis has not been shy to criticize President Trump’s policy more directly. On an Italian TV show on the threshold of the inauguration, he said Mr. Trump’s deportation plans: “If it’s true will be a shame.”

During President Trump’s first period, “the Vatican thought Trump was a historic mistake that would be fixed,” Mr. said Faggioli. “Now they know it’s a new era.”

There was no immediate comment from the White House.

In the letter, which was unannounced, Francis called on Catholics to consider human values, not promise or regulations, such as the primary compass that drives their actions.

“Consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the person’s dignity and his or her fundamental rights,” he wrote. “Not the other way around.”

He reminded the Catholics that Jesus and his family were migrants to Egypt, and admonished “all the believers in the Catholic Church” not to “give in to tales that discriminate and cause unnecessary suffering for our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”

Other Christian leaders have also criticized President Trump.

During the preliminary prayer service in Washington National Cathedral last month, Bishop Mariann Bad Edgar Budde, the head of the diocese of Washington, President Trump, to have grace over undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ children and others.

The day after, Mr. Trump an apology from the “so -called Bishop” and “Radical Left Hard Line Trump Hater” on his social media platform truth social.