President Trump Thursday congratulated Pope Leo XIV, calling it a “great honor” that the Chicago-born pontiff has turn out to be the primary pope born within the U.S.
“It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope,” Trump wrote on his social media website. “What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country.”
Trump stated he regarded ahead to assembly the newly minted chief of the world’s greater than 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.
“It will be a very meaningful moment,” he added.
Regardless of the reward, Leo has been a fierce critic of Trump’s harsh insurance policies on immigration and took to social media a number of occasions in current months to denounce the brand new administration’s mass deportations of undocumented immigrants from the U.S.
The previous Cardinal Robert Prevost final month retweeted a put up from a Catholic scholar who referred to as out Trump for the “illicit deportation” of Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The put up he retweeted trashed Trump for his jocular assembly with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele after Abrego Garcia was improperly deported to his homeland in defiance of a courtroom order and imprisoned with out cost.
“Do you not see the suffering,” the put up stated. “Is your conscience not disturbed?”
The long run pope additionally took intention at Vice President JD Vance for his views on immigration and mass deportations.
Then-Cardinal Prevost reposted a letter from Pope Francis and an opinion piece by a Catholic scholar rebuking Vance after he promoted a controversial theological doctrine referred to as “ordo amoris,” which implies “order of love.”
Vance, a convert to Roman Catholicism, steered in January that “ordo amoris” means folks ought to love their households and communities first earlier than desirous about the remainder of humanity, an edict that would bolster his anti-immigrant stands.
“(You) love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” Vance stated in January.
However Leo countered by tweeting a bit entitled: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
Vance briefly visited the ailing Francis final month on the Vatican, simply hours earlier than his loss of life.
Regardless of the rift, Vance tweeted congratulations to Leo, saying “May God bless him.”
“I’m sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the church,” Vance tweeted.
