(Headline USA) Virtue-signaling glory hound Pope Francis strayed farther from actual religious doctrine on Tuesday and waded deeper into heated U.S. political debate by attacking the current Republican administration for dialing back former President Joe Biden’s open-border policies.
Francis ranted over the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportations of illegal immigrants, insisting that the forceful removal of people purely because of their citizenship status deprived them of their inherent dignity and “will end badly.”
Francis, the first Latin American pope, replaced the conservative Pope Benedict XVI in 2013 under highly dubious circumstances and has been criticized for his woke positions on matters traditionally not deemed within the purview of the church, as well as some that would seem to be in direct disregard of Catholic dogma.
He took the unusual step of expressing his views on U.S. immigration policy in a letter to U.S. bishops that appeared to take direct aim at Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the deportation program on theological grounds.
Vance, a Catholic convert, has defended the administration’s America-first crackdown by citing a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as ordo amoris.
He has said the concept delineates a hierarchy of care—to family first, followed by neighbor, community, fellow citizens and lastly those elsewhere.
Vance’s reference to the ordo amoris has won support from many on the Catholic right in the U.S., including the Catholic League.
Writing in Crisis Magazine, editor Eric Sammons said Vance was merely drawing on the wisdom of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and the broader teaching of the Church to insist on loving things in an order.
“For Augustine, every love, even the love of neighbor, must be ordered beneath the love of God,” he wrote. “This hierarchy extends to our human relationships where love for family, community, and nation should precede our love for the world at large, not in intensity but in priority of duty and responsibility.”
Francis, however, quibbled with the notion that there should be different degrees of charitable duty based on a person’s relationships to the beneficiaries.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” he wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
In the letter, Francis showed some self-awareness, conceding that nations had the right to defend themselves and keep their communities safe from criminals.
“That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” he wrote.
Citing the Book of Exodus and the New Testament, Francis described the deportation plan as a “major crisis” unfolding in the U.S.
Anyone schooled in Christianity “cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality,” he claimed. “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”
U.S. border czar Tom Homan, a Catholic, immediately pushed back, noting that the Vatican was a city–state surrounded by walls. He said Francis should focus on fixing the Catholic Church while leaving border enforcement to his office.
“He wants to attack us for securing our border. He’s got a wall around the Vatican, does he not?” Homan told reporters in a video from The Hill posted on X. “So he’s got a wall around that protects his people and himself, but we can’t have a wall around the United States.”
The Vatican, a walled-in, 108-acre city state inside Rome, recently increased sanctions for anyone who illegally enters the territory. The December law calls for a prison term of up to four years and a fine of up to 25,000 euros ($25,873) for anyone who enters with “violence, threat or deception,” such as by evading security checkpoints.
However, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, a strong ally of Francis, cheered Francis’s letter and, in comments to Vatican Media, said it showed that the pope considered “the protection and advocacy for the dignity of migrants as the preeminent urgency at this moment.”
The Argentine Jesuit pope has frequently espoused open borders for other sovereign nations, however, citing the biblical command to “welcome the stranger.” Francis has demanded that other governments, to the limits of their capacity, welcome, protect, promote and integrate those fleeing a wide range of circumstances, including political turmoil, poor economic conditions and weather events.
Before Trump’s first administration, in 2016, Francis notoriously sought to meddle in the U.S. election, declaring that anyone who built a wall to keep out illegal immigrants was “not a Christian.”
Trump nonetheless defeated suspected spirit-cooking practitioner Hillary Clinton, securing 56% of the Catholic vote to Clinton’s 40% according to the National Catholic Register.
Illegal immigration is not the only area of conflict in U.S.–Vatican relations.
On Monday, the Vatican’s main charity, Caritas International, complained that millions of people could die as a result of the “ruthless” U.S. decision to “recklessly” stop USAID funding. Caritas asked governments to urgently call on the Trump administration to reverse course.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
