Pope Francis on Friday criticized both former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris over their “anti-life” policies and urged American Catholics to vote for the “lesser evil” in November.
“Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants or the one who [supports] killing babies,” Francis reportedly told journalists during a press conference aboard his papal plane. “Both are against life.”
The Pope’s comments came in response to a question on how American Catholics should vote on Election Day.
Francis did not refer to Harris or Trump by name, though he seemed to be criticizing Harris’s pro-abortion stance and Trump’s plans to secure the U.S. southern border.
He argued that Scripture says migration is a right and that anyone who doesn’t welcome a stranger is committing a “grave sin.” In 2016, Francis said Trump’s plans to build a border wall was “not Christian.”
Trump has said he plans to implement the largest mass deportation of illegal immigrants in the country’s history, if he is reelected. He also plans to suspend the refugee program and prohibit entry from Muslim-majority countries, as well as reinstate his so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers to wait out their immigration proceedings in Mexico.
During the first presidential debate matchup between Trump and Harris earlier this week, the former president accused Harris of allowing “millions of people” to enter the U.S. from “prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and they’re coming in and they’re taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics and also unions.”
He also pushed an unproven claim that Haitian immigrants are “eating the pets” of residents in Springfield, Ohio.
Meanwhile, Francis said Friday that to have an abortion is to “kill a human being.”
“You may like the word or not, but it’s killing,” he said. “We have to see this clearly.”
Harris, if elected, hopes to sign a bill protecting abortion nationwide. Trump, for his part, has said the issue of abortion should be left to the states after the overturn of Roe v. Wade — though he has said in recent weeks that he believes a six-week ban on abortion, like that of Florida, is too strict.
“One should vote, and choose the lesser evil,” Francis said when asked what American Catholics should do. “Who is the lesser evil, the woman or man? I don’t know.”
“Everyone in their conscience should think and do it,” he said.
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