Pope Francis slams Trump and Harris, saying voters must decide between ‘lesser of two evils’

Pope Francis has strongly criticized both US presidential candidates over what he calls anti-life policies on abortion and migration

Pope Francis (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Pope Francis has slammed both US presidential candidates for what he called anti-life policies on abortion and migration.

The leader of the world’s 1.39 billion Catholics advised American believers to choose the “lesser evil” in the upcoming US elections.

“Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants or the one who (supports) killing babies,” Francis said on Friday. “Both are against life.”

The Argentine Jesuit was asked to provide counsel to American Catholic voters during an airborne press conference en route back to Rome from his four-nation tour through Asia. Francis stressed that he is not an American and would not be voting.

Neither the Republican candidate Donald Trump nor the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris was mentioned by name.

But the Pope nevertheless expressed himself in stark terms when asked to weigh in on their positions on two hot-button issues in the US election — abortion and migration — that are also of major concern to the Catholic Church.

Francis has made the plight of migrants a priority of his pontificate and speaks out emphatically and frequently about it. While strongly upholding church teaching forbidding abortion, Francis hasn’t emphasized church doctrine as much as his predecessors.

Pope Francis holds a news conference aboard the papal plane on his flight back after his 12-day journey across Southeast Asia and Oceania (AP)

The pontiff said migration is a right described in scripture, and that anyone who doesn’t follow the biblical call to welcome the stranger is committing a “grave sin.”

He was also blunt in speaking about abortion. “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.”

Asked though what to do at the polls, Francis recalled the civic duty to vote.

“One should vote, and choose the lesser evil,” he said. “Who is the lesser evil, the woman or man? I don’t know.

“Everyone in their conscience should think and do it,” he added.

(POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

It’s not the first time Pope Francis has weighed in on a US election. In the run-up to the 2016 election, he was asked about Trump’s plan to build a wall at the US-Mexican border. The pontiff declared then that anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants “is not Christian.”

In responding on Friday, Francis recalled that he celebrated Mass at the US-Mexico border and “there were so many shoes of the migrants who ended up badly there.”

The US bishops conference, for its part, has called abortion the “preeminent priority” for American Catholics in its published voter advice. Harris has strongly defended abortion rights.

President Joe Biden, while a staunch supporter of a woman’s right to choose, is a devout Catholic and has met with the current pope twice during his presidency — in October 2021 at the Vatican, and as recently as June this year during the G7 summit in Italy.

Trump met the Pope once as president, at the Vatican in May 2017, just four months into his administration.

In other comments, the Pope denied reports he will be at the inauguration of the restored Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris but would like to go to the Canary Islands to highlight the plight of migrants there.

Francis also said he would like to visit his native Argentina, to which he has not returned since becoming pope, but added: “There are various things to resolve first.”