By Blake Wolf, OAN Staff
Friday, September 13, 2024 2:04 PM
Pope Francis, speaking out after an intensive 12-day visit to Southeast Asia and Oceania, called on American Catholics to “choose the lesser evil” as he addressed the upcoming US presidential election.
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The pope also offered harsh criticism of both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, citing Harris' secular abortion policies and Trump's immigration policies.
But the Pope doesn't pay taxes and has not personally experienced the downsides of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. unchecked, so his distaste for Trump's border policies is not surprising.
“Both those who expel migrants and those who kill babies are against life,” Pope Francis said.
Despite his criticism of both candidates, he still urged American Catholics to vote.
“Political morality generally says that not voting is a bad thing, not a good thing. You have to vote and choose the lesser evil,” he added. “Who is the lesser evil? That woman or that man? I don't know. Everyone has to think about this and act on it according to their conscience.”
The Pope also elaborated on his anti-abortion stance, calling abortion murder.
“Regarding abortion, science tells us that one month after conception, all the organs of a human being are already present. All of them. To perform an abortion is to kill a human being. Whether you like the word or not, it is murder. You cannot say that the Church is closed because it does not allow abortion. The Church does not allow abortion because abortion is murder. It is murder,” Francis continued.
Francis also argued that those who “fail to obey the biblical call” to welcome the stranger are committing a “grave sin.”
However, online social media users argued that Francis was erring and lost in his religious argument as entering the US illegally is a crime.
These comments echo those of Pope Francis in 2016 about Trump's border wall, in which the pontiff claimed Trump was “not Christian” because he wanted to “keep immigrants out.”
“It is wrong and terrible to expel immigrants, to not allow them to grow and live. It is murder to take a baby away from its mother's breast when there is life. We must speak clearly about these things,” the Pope said.
Trump, meanwhile, previously said he too had converted to Christianity, but identifies as a non-denominational Christian rather than a Catholic who follows the Pope.
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