Taken from UNIVISION
The presidential candidates for the November elections in the US, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, do not seem to have the Pope’s blessing.
This Friday, Pope Francis described the choice they must make American voters view the presidential election as a “lesser of two evils”considering that both the anti-immigrant policies of former President Trump and Vice President Harris’ support for abortion rights are “anti-life.”
“We must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know,” Francis said during a press conference on the papal plane returning him to Rome after his tour of Asia.
The pope made the comment in front of a group of reporters during a flight from Singapore to Jakarta on his way back to the Vatican after a 12-day tour of Asia and the Pacific. Both the issue of immigration to the United States and abortion figured prominently in the presidential debate between Harris and Trump on Tuesday.
The journalists asked Francisco to advise American Catholics on how to vote And although he stressed that he is not a citizen of the country and therefore would not vote in the November elections, he said that “everyone with a conscience should think about this.”
Asked whether there were any circumstances under which it would be morally possible for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights, Francis said that he considered political morality and the civic duty to vote. “You have to vote,” he said.
Throughout his papacy, Francis has prioritized the plight of immigrants and has spoken emphatically and frequently about it. While he has firmly defended Catholic doctrine prohibiting abortion, he has not emphasized it as much as his predecessors.
Francis on immigration
Francis said that migration is a right described in the scriptures and that Anyone who does not follow the biblical call to welcome the stranger is committing a “grave sin”.
She was also blunt when speaking about abortion. “Aborting is killing a human being. You may like the word or not, but it is deadly,” she said, adding that “we have to see this clearly.”
This is not the first time Francis has weighed in on U.S. policy. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Francis was asked about Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants “is not Christian,” the pope said.
Responding on Friday, Francis recalled that he celebrated Mass at the U.S.-Mexico border and “there were so many shoes of migrants that ended up badly there.”
Trump is promising mass deportations, just as he did in his first run for the White House, when there was a huge gap between his ambitions and the legal, financial and political realities of such a plan.
#Pope #choose #lesser #evils
