Pope Francis on Friday described the choice US voters must make in the presidential election as one between the “lesser of two evils”, deeming former US President Donald Trump‘s anti-migrant policies and Vice President Kamala Harris‘ support of abortion rights as both being “against life”.
“One 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, referring to Harris and Trump.
“Everyone with a conscience should think on this and do it.”
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The Argentine Jesuit was asked to provide counsel to American Catholic voters during an airborne news conference while he flew back to Rome from his four-nation tour through Asia.
Francis stressed that he is not an American and would not be voting.
Neither Republican candidate Donald Trump nor Democratic candidate Kamala Harris were mentioned by name.
But Francis 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, who has been more vocal about politics than his predecessors and has moved to make the Catholic Church more open, has stressed over the years that the issue of abortion cannot be isolated from other human rights concerns, such as immigration.
While Francis maintains the official stance of the church that abortion is a grave sin and slammed Harris on Friday for backing reproductive rights, he also criticised Trump’s immigration policies as “evil”.
“To send migrants away, to leave them wherever you want, to leave them … it’s something terrible, there is evil there. To send away a child from the womb of the mother is an assassination, because there is life. We must speak about these things clearly,” he said.
Francis said migration is a right described in Scripture and that anyone who does not 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.”
It’s not the first time Francis has weighed in on a US election.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Francis was asked about Trump’s plan to build a wall at the US-Mexico border. Francis 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”.
Trump pledges massive deportations, just as he did in his first White House bid, when there was a vast gulf between his ambitions and the legal, financial and political realities of such an undertaking.
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 and has emphasised support for reinstating a federal right to abortion.
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