Pope blasts Trump admin over mass deportation plan, directs ire at Vance's religious defense for policies

Pope Francis connected Tuesday issued a large rebuke of the Trump administration’s plans for the wide deportations of migrants, stressing that the forceful removal of radical simply for their migration presumption deprives them of their inherent dignity and "will extremity badly."

Francis wrote a missive to U.S. bishops successful which helium appeared to knock Vice President JD Vance's spiritual statement successful defence of the deportation policies.

U.S. borderline czar Tom Homan responded to the pope, saying that the Vatican is simply a city-state surrounded by walls and that Francis should permission migration enforcement to him. Homan, a Catholic, besides said Francis should absorption connected fixing the Catholic Church alternatively than U.S. migration policies.

"He wants to onslaught america for securing our border. He's got a partition astir the Vatican, does helium not?" Homan told reporters. "So he's got a partition astir that protects his radical and himself, but we can't person a partition astir the United States."

DOZENS OF RELIGIOUS GROUPS SUE TO STOP TRUMP ADMIN FROM ARRESTING MIGRANTS IN PLACES OF WORSHIP

Pope Francis presides implicit a wide for the jubilee of the equipped forces successful St. Peter's Square astatine The Vatican, Sunday Feb. 9, 2025. (AP)

As the archetypal Latin American pope, Francis has agelong held the presumption of caring for migrants, pointing to the biblical bid to "welcome the stranger" successful calling connected countries to welcome, protect, beforehand and integrate radical fleeing conflicts, poorness and clime disasters.

Francis and President Donald Trump person agelong butted heads implicit the issue of immigration, including anterior to Trump's archetypal term, erstwhile Francis said successful 2016 that anyone who builds a partition to support migrants retired was "not a Christian."

In his letter, Francis acknowledged that governments person the close to support their countries and support their communities harmless from criminals, but said the deportation of radical who fled their countries owed to assorted hard circumstances damages their dignity.

"That said, the enactment of deporting radical who successful galore cases person near their ain onshore for reasons of utmost poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution oregon superior deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of galore men and women, and of full families, and places them successful a authorities of peculiar vulnerability and defenselessness," helium wrote.

Pointing to the Book of Exodus successful the Bible and Jesus Christ's experience, Francis emphasized the close of radical to question structure and information successful different lands and said the Trump administration's deportation program was a "major crisis."

Anyone educated successful Christianity, helium said, "cannot neglect to marque a captious judgement and explicit its disagreement with immoderate measurement that tacitly oregon explicitly identifies the amerciable presumption of immoderate migrants with criminality."

"What is built connected the ground of force, and not connected the information astir the adjacent dignity of each quality being, begins severely and volition extremity badly," helium continued.

POPE FRANCIS CALLS TRUMP'S DEPORTATION PLAN A 'DISGRACE'

Pope Francis astatine his play assemblage successful the Vatican connected Feb. 28, 2024.  (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, thanked the pope for his letter.

"With you, we commune that the U.S. authorities support its anterior commitments to assistance those successful hopeless need," Broglio wrote. "Boldly I inquire for your continued prayers truthful that we whitethorn find the courageousness arsenic a federation to physique a much humane strategy of immigration, 1 that protects our communities portion safeguarding the dignity of all."

White House property caput Karoline Leavitt said past week that much than 8,000 radical had been arrested since Trump took bureau Jan. 20 arsenic portion of the president's program to detain and deport immigrants successful the state illegally, though hundreds of those arrested person since been released backmost into the U.S. Others person been deported, are being held successful national prisons oregon are being held astatine the Guantánamo Bay Cuba, detention camp.

Vance, a Catholic convert, has defended the administration's deportation plans by citing a conception from medieval Catholic theology known successful Latin arsenic "ordo amoris," which helium has said describes a hierarchy of care: prioritizing the household first, past the neighbor, community, chap citizens and lastly those from different regions.

But Francis sought to fact-check Vance's understanding of the concept.

"Christian emotion is not a concentric enlargement of interests that small by small widen to different persons and groups," Francis wrote successful his letter. "The existent ordo amoris that indispensable beryllium promoted is that which we observe by meditating perpetually connected the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating connected the emotion that builds a fraternity unfastened to all, without exception."

J.D. Vance walks into the Senate Chamber connected Capitol Hill connected April 23, 2024, successful Washington, D.C.  (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

As Homan referenced, the Vatican is simply a walled-in, 108-acre city-state wrong Rome, and it precocious accrued sanctions for anyone who enters illegally. The law, approved successful December, calls for radical to look up to 4 years successful situation and a good of up to 25,000 euros, oregon $25,873, if they participate with "violence, menace oregon deception," including by evading information checkpoints.

The U.S. bishops league had already released a connection condemning Trump’s migration policies aft his archetypal enforcement orders.

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Anyone "focused connected the attraction of immigrants and refugees, overseas aid, enlargement of the decease penalty, and the environment, are profoundly troubling and volition person antagonistic consequences, galore of which volition harm the astir susceptible among us," the connection said.

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago praised Francis' letter, telling Vatican Media that it showed the pope viewed "the extortion and advocacy for the dignity of migrants arsenic the preeminent urgency astatine this moment."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.