Pope Francis has waded into US politics in a rare intervention, criticising both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris as being “against life” and urging American voters to pick “the lesser evil” between the two.
Francis crticised Mr Trump’s policies towards migrants and Ms Harris’s stance on abortion, as he spoke to reporters on board his return flight after an historic Asia-Pacific tour.
America has some 72 million Catholics, and the Pope was asked to provide guidance to them on who they should vote for on Tuesday 5 November.
The pontiff appeared to hit out first at Mr Trump for his xenophobic remarks, saying not welcoming migrants is a “grave” sin. Mr Trump has repeatedly made headlines in recent days for claiming without evidence that Haitian migrants are eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio.
But he then also came down hard on Ms Harris’s stance on abortion, calling it a form of “assassination”. Though his references were clear, he did not name either directly.
“Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants or the one who (supports) killing babies,” Francis said. “Both are against life.”
Francis stressed that he is not an American and would not be voting.
The Pope 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 emphasised church doctrine as much as his predecessors.
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.
Pope Francis also criticised Mr Trump in the run-up to his 2016 election win, when he was asked about the Republican’s much-vaunted 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.
Mr 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 said he 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.”