Pope Francis launched a stinging critique Tuesday of US President Donald Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, describing it as a “main disaster” that “damages the dignity of women and men”.
In a letter to US bishops, he urged Catholics and others “to not give in to narratives that discriminate towards and trigger pointless struggling to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters”.
The Argentine pontiff, 88, has repeatedly defended the rights of migrants throughout his 10 years main the Catholic Church, urging world leaders to be extra welcoming to these fleeing poverty or violence.
“I’ve adopted carefully the foremost disaster that’s going down in the USA with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” he wrote Tuesday.
He acknowledged “the proper of a nation to defend itself and hold communities protected from those that have dedicated violent or critical crimes whereas within the nation or previous to arrival”.
However he wrote that “the act of deporting individuals who in lots of instances have left their very own land for causes of maximum poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or critical deterioration of the setting, damages the dignity of many women and men, and of total households”.
Deportation “locations them in a state of specific vulnerability and defencelessness”, he wrote.
Francis had warned as Trump returned to the White Home final month that his pledge to hold out the most important deportation marketing campaign in US historical past, by expelling hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, can be a “calamity”.
“This isn’t a minor subject — an genuine rule of legislation is verified exactly within the dignified remedy that each one folks deserve, particularly the poorest and most marginalised,” he wrote in his letter.
He added: “This doesn’t impede the event of a coverage that regulates orderly and authorized migration. Nonetheless, this growth can’t come about by the privilege of some and the sacrifice of others.
“What’s constructed on the premise of power, and never on the reality in regards to the equal dignity of each human being, begins badly and can finish badly.”
He welcomed the work achieved by Catholic clergy with refugees and migrants.
“I exhort all of the trustworthy of the Catholic Church, and all women and men of fine will, to not give in to narratives that discriminate towards and trigger pointless struggling to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters,” he wrote.
