“Build Bridges, Not Walls”: Pope Francis’ Funeral Sermon Offered Thinly Veiled Reminder to President Donald Trump

“We discussed a lot one-on-one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out. Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results,” the Ukrainian president wrote, thanking and tagging Trump.

The president and Pope Francis have clashed a number of instances since Trump’s first bid for the White House just about a decade in the past.

In 2016, the pope criticized Trump’s proposal to construct a wall at the US-Mexico border, telling journalists on the time that, “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” Trump temporarily fired again, pronouncing, “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”

“If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President,” he stated in a commentary.

Then, when the pair met all the way through a 2017 shuttle to the Vatican, the president claimed that they had a “fantastic meeting.” This interplay gave upward push to the viral picture of Trump and Francis status subsequent to one another with very other expressions.

Fast ahead to Trump’s 2d presidency, and the pope once more made an extraordinary rebuke of the United States’ management. In a public letter from February to Catholic bishops within the United States, Francis described this system of mass deportations as a “major crisis.”

Deporting migrants who incessantly come from tough eventualities, Francis wrote, violates the “dignity of many men and women, and of entire families,” including that he had “followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” and believes that any coverage constructed on pressure “begins badly and will end badly.”