Pope Francis has criticized US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport immigrants as a “disgrace.”
The pontiff, speaking during an Italian television interview, was asked about the incoming Trump administration’s plans to expel undocumented immigrants through an aggressive slate of immigration executive orders by the incoming president, who will be inaugurated Monday.
“If it is true, it will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing to pay the unpaid bill. It won’t do. This is not the way to solve things,” Francis said during the Sunday interview.
The Pope has made advocacy for migrants a key part of his papacy, insisting they should be welcomed and integrated into societies.
It’s also a topic which resonates personally with Francis. In his new autobiography, the Pope recalled how his paternal grandparents and father had planned to sail in 1927 on the Principessa Mafalda from Italy to Argentina, which sank with the loss of many lives, but ended up making a later crossing.
Francis has signaled that he is ready to take a critical approach to the new Trump administration with his appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy as the next Archbishop of Washington, DC.
McElroy has described mass deportations of immigrants as “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”
On Sunday, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, also criticized the deportation plans. In 2016, Francis suggested then-presidential candidate Trump was “not Christian” for his anti-immigration views.
During the interview, the Pope also said he was appointing a nun, Sister Raffaella Petrini, as president of the commission which governs the Vatican City State.
Petrini will take over from a cardinal in her new role and is expected to take up her position in March. He appointment follows the Pope’s decision earlier this month to appoint the first female leader of a Vatican department.
The Pope also said that his arm, which had been in a sling after he injured it in a fall, is now “moving better.”