This story has been updated.
On his way back to the Vatican after a six-day visit to Mexico, Pope Francis said Thursday that anyone who wants to build a border wall “is not Christian” when asked about Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” His Holiness told reporters on board his airliner. “This is not in the Gospel.”
Because the Pope had not independently heard about Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall at the U.S. border with Mexico, he said he would “give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“I’d just say that this man is not Christian if he said it this way,” the Pope added.
Trump’s campaign quickly released a statement calling Francis’ remarks “disgraceful,” which the candidate read aloud at an event in South Carolina.
“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian and as President I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened,” he said in the statement.
Trump also said if the Islamic State were ever to attack the Vatican, the Pope “would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President.”
At the event, he also suggested the Mexican government is “using the Pope as a pawn.”
The Republican has previously heaped praise on Pope Francis. In December 2013 he tweeted about the new Pope: “I like him so much!”
The new Pope is a humble man, very much like me, which probably explains why I like him so much!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 25, 2013
Ouch! That actually might leave a mark.
Wait, if wanting a wall on the Mexican border means you´re not a Christian, that would mean most of the ¨Christians¨ in the Republican Party… aren´t Christians!
Well, hell. I knew that already.
Aside from (some of) its teachings on social justice, I have little regard for the institution.
But of those who reigned more than 33 days, Francis is my favorite.
(He’s so popular, his Papal Trading Card fetches a Leo XIII and a Pius IX.)
So, the misogynist homophobic pedophile-enabler pot is calling the racist torture-enabling vulgarian kettle black.
Ah, how wonderful it is not to follow any organized religion or the Republican Party in the morning! It smells like…sanity!
We kind of knew that when Drumpf referred to 2 Corinthians and mistook communion for the collection plate.