OAN Staff Blake Wolf
2:04 PM – Friday, September 13, 2024
Following an intense 12-day tour across Southeast Asia and Oceania, Pope Francis weighed in on the upcoming U.S. presidential election, telling American Catholics to “choose the lesser evil.”
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The Pope also had harsh criticism for both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Democrat and GOP presidential nominees. He cited Harris’s secular abortion policies as well as Trump’s immigration policies.
However, his dislike of Trump’s border policies did not come as a surprise, as the Pope does not pay taxes and he does not personally experience the negative aspects of unvetted illegal aliens crossing over into the U.S.
“Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies,” Pope Francis stated.
Despite the criticism of the two candidates, he still urged American Catholics to vote.
“In political morality, in general they say that if you don’t vote, it’s not good, it’s bad. You have to vote, and you have to choose the lesser evil,” he added. “Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don’t know. Everyone, in conscience, (has to) think and do this.”
The Pope also went in depth on his own personal anti-abortion stance, labeling it as murder.
“On abortion, science says that a month from conception, all the organs of a human being are already there, all of them. Performing an abortion is killing a human being. Whether you like the word or not, this is killing. You can’t say the church is closed because it does not allow abortion. The church does not allow abortion because it’s killing. It is murder,” Francis continued.
Additionally, Francis claimed that anyone who does not “follow the Biblical call” of welcoming strangers is committing a “grave sin.”
However, social media users online argued that since it is a crime to crossover into the U.S. illegally, Francis is both mistaken and lost in his religious argument.
These comments are consistent with Pope Francis’s 2016 comments regarding Trump’s border wall, where he claimed that Trump “is not Christian,” for wanting to “keep migrants out.”
“Sending migrants away, not letting them develop, not letting them have life, is a bad and nasty thing. Sending a baby away from its mother’s breast is a murder because there is life. On these things, we must speak plainly,” the Pope said.
Meanwhile, Trump previously announced that he has converted to Christianity himself, except, the former president considers himself to be a non-denominational Christian, rather than a Catholic who typically adheres to a Pope figure.
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