Rome — Pope Francis weighed in Friday on the choices for voters within the 2024 U.S. presidential election, indicating to reporters on the papal aircraft as he returned from a marathon Asia journey that each Vice President Kamala Harris and her Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, are, in his opinion, “towards life.”
Requested by CBS Information what he would advise a Catholic voter compelled to decide on between a candidate who backs abortion rights and one who has stated he would have 11 million migrants deported, the pope stated: “They’re each towards life — the one who throws away migrants and the one who kills kids.”
The pope addressed the matters, each of which featured prominently within the presidential debate between Harris and Trump on Tuesday evening, as he spoke with journalists on a flight from Singapore to Jakarta, making his approach again to Rome from a 12-day, 20,000 mile tour of Asia and the Pacific.
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Requested whether or not there have been any circumstances below which it could be morally permissible for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who does help abortion rights, Francis stated when contemplating political morality, “one should vote.”
“One should select the lesser of two evils,” he stated. “Who’s the lesser of two evils, that woman or that gentleman, I have no idea.”
Pope Francis stated American Catholic voters must look at their conscience and make that call earlier than going to the polls.
“It ought to be clear that sending migrants away, denying migrants the capability to work, to not welcome migrants, it’s a sin. It’s grave,” the pope stated.
Francis stated immigration was a proper that dates again to biblical occasions, and famous that it was repeated within the Outdated Testomony of the Bible that the folks of Israel had an obligation “to maintain the orphan, the widow and the stranger — that’s, the migrant.”
Francis additionally reiterated the Catholic Church’s place that abortion is homicide.
“Whether or not you just like the phrase or not, it’s a killing,” he stated. “It’s an assassination, and on this we ought to be clear.”
