Pope rebukes Trump administration over immigrant deportations and appears to aim directly at Vance

Pope Francis presides over a mass for the jubilee of the armed forces in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Sunday Feb.9, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

ROME — Pope Francis issued a major rebuke Tuesday to the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportations of migrants, warning that the forceful removal of people purely because of their illegal status deprives them of their inherent dignity and “will end badly.”

Francis took the remarkable step of addressing the U.S. migrant crackdown in a letter to U.S. bishops in which he appeared to take direct aim at Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the deportation program on theological grounds.

U.S. border czar Tom Homan immediately pushed back, noting that the Vatican is a city-state surrounded by walls and that Francis should leave border enforcement to his office.

History’s first Latin American pope has long made caring for migrants a priority of his pontificate, citing the biblical command to “welcome the stranger” in demanding that countries welcome, protect, promote and integrate those fleeing conflicts, poverty and climate disasters. Francis has also said governments are expected to do so to the limits of their capacity.

The Argentine Jesuit and President Donald Trump have long sparred over migration, including before Trump’s first administration when Francis in 2016 famously said anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants was “not a Christian.”

In the letter, Francis said nations have the right to defend themselves and keep their communities safe from criminals.

“That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” he wrote.

Citing the Book of Exodus and Jesus Christ’s own experience, Francis affirmed the right of people to seek shelter and safety in other lands and described the deportation plan as a “major crisis” unfolding in the U.S.

Anyone schooled in Christianity “cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality,” he said.

“What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly,” he warned.

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, responded with a letter of thanks to the pope.

“With you, we pray that the U.S. government keep its prior commitments to help those in desperate need,” Broglio wrote. “Boldly I ask for your continued prayers so that we may find the courage as a nation to build a more humane system of immigration, one that protects our communities while safeguarding the dignity of all.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week that more than 8,000 people had been arrested in immigration enforcement actions since Trump took office Jan. 20. Some have been deported, others are being held in federal prisons and still others are being held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Vance, a Catholic convert, has defended the administration’s America-first crackdown by citing a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as “ordo amoris.” He has said the concept delineates a hierarchy of care — to family first, followed by neighbor, community, fellow citizens and lastly those elsewhere.

In his letter, Francis appeared to correct Vance’s understanding of the concept.

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” he wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

David Gibson, director of the center for religion and culture at Fordham University, said in a social media post that Francis' letter “takes aim at every single absurd theological claim by JD Vance and his allies in conservative Catholicism (and the Catholic electorate).”

Vance’s reference to the ordo amoris had won support from many on the Catholic right in the U.S., including the Catholic League, which said he was right about the hierarchy of Christian love.

Writing in Crisis Magazine, editor Eric Sammons said Vance was merely drawing on the wisdom of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and the broader teaching of the Church to insist on loving things in an order.

“For Augustine, every love, even the love of neighbor, must be ordered beneath the love of God,” he wrote. “This hierarchy extends to our human relationships where love for family, community, and nation should precede our love for the world at large, not in intensity but in priority of duty and responsibility.”

Homan, a Catholic, said Francis should fix the Catholic Church and leave U.S. border protection to his department.

“He wants to attack us for securing our border. He’s got a wall around the Vatican, does he not?” Homan told reporters in a video from The Hill posted on X. “So he’s got a wall around that protects his people and himself, but we can’t have a wall around the United States.”

The Vatican, a walled-in, 44-hectare (108-acre) city state inside Rome, recently increased sanctions for anyone who illegally enters the territory. The December law calls for a prison term of up to four years and a fine of up to 25,000 euros ($25,873) for anyone who enters with “violence, threat or deception,” such as by evading security checkpoints.

The U.S. bishops conference had already put out an unusually critical statement after Trump’s initial executive orders. It said those “focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty, and the environment, are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us.”

It was a strong rebuke from the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, which considers abortion to be the “preeminent priority” for Catholic voters and had cheered the 2022 Supreme Court decision to end constitutional protections for abortion that was made possible by Trump-appointed justices. Trump won 54 per cent of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, a wider margin than the 50 per cent in the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden, a Catholic.

Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ migration committee, said the pope’s letter provided much needed encouragement as the church deals “with these very threatening circumstances towards immigrants, towards our immigrant brothers and sisters, and also towards those who assist them in any way.”

Seitz told The Associated Press that faith leaders should listen to the worries of those who fear the impacts of immigration, including Catholic voters who support Trump. “But we have to just steadfastly announce the truth as best we understand it, both in terms of the teaching of the church and the reality on the ground,” he added.

Associated Press reporter Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis contributed.