Pope Francis hits out at Trump's mass deportation of migrants

Pope Francis has rebuked the Trump administration over its planned mass deportation of migrants, warning that such a policy “will end badly”.

In a letter to US bishops, the Catholic leader said that nations have the right to protect themselves, but stressed that forcibly removing immigrants “damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defencelessness”.

It is not the first time that the pope, who has long urged countries to protect the vulnerable, has clashed with Donald Trump.

In the US president’s first term, Francis said that anyone who built a wall with the aim of keeping out migrants was “not a Christian”.

The pope’s most recent intervention comes as Trump has increased the scale of his anti-migration efforts, part of what he has promised will be a policy of "mass deportation".

Speaking last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said more than 8,000 people had been arrested since 20 January for being in the US illegally.

Deportation flights have left for countries including Colombia, Guatemala and Venezuela, while some migrants are now being held at the infamous US naval base-cum-prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Referencing biblical stories involving migration, the pope said that people have the right to seek shelter elsewhere.

“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” he said.

“The rightly formed conscience 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.”

Francis added that Trump’s actions will not have good results.

“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.”

The pope also sought to correct an interpretation of Christian love put forward by the US Vice President JD Vance, himself a Catholic convert.

Vance recently argued that the Christian doctrine of “ordo amoris”, a Latin phrase which translates as “the order of love”, shows that people should love their own family first and turn next to their neighbours, before considering their communities, their fellow citizens and, finally, people from other countries.

In response, Francis cited the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus highlights the importance of loving and supporting people from outside of one's own community.

David Gibson, director of the centre for religion and culture at Fordham University, said the pope’s letter debunked JD Vance’s “absurd theological claim”.

“This is the pope also directly countering misinformation about the Catholic faith that is being expounded by the Catholic vice president,” he said.