WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with Politico published Dec. 9 that he would be open to meeting with Pope Leo XIV and responded to the pontiff’s pushback to his immigration policy.
Pope Leo has been critical of the Trump administration‘s immigration policy, particularly its treatment of migrants, calling it “inhuman.”
Asked about the U.S.-born pope’s comments in an interview with Politico’s Dasha Burns for an episode of its digital program “The Conversation,” Trump suggested he was unaware of the comments.
“I haven’t seen that,” Trump said. “I mean … I mean, he … maybe he has. I mean, he also didn’t like the wall. You know, they didn’t like the wall. The wall turned out to be great.”
Trump’s comment about the wall was an apparent reference to 2016 criticism from the late Pope Francis of the president’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
In November, Pope Leo told reporters in Castel Gandolfo that he was supportive of the “special pastoral message on immigration” approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Nov. 12, voicing “the church’s concern for neighbor and our concern here for immigrants.”
Pope Leo said, “No one has said that the United States should have open borders. I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter.”
But, he added, in enforcing immigration policy, “we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.”
Catholic social teaching on immigration balances three interrelated principles — the right of persons to migrate in order to sustain their lives and those of their families; the right of a country to regulate its borders and control immigration; and a nation’s duty to regulate its borders with justice and mercy.
Asked by Politico if he would be willing to meet with or speak with Pope Leo, Trump suggested openness. “Sure, I will. Why not?”
Elsewhere in the interview, Trump ranked his approach to the economy as “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” although polls show voters continue to express concern on cost-of-living issues and argued the U.S. Supreme Court should rule in his favor in a case over his executive order attempting to restrict the practice of birthright citizenship.
Asked about whether Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — who uses the moniker “secretary of war” since Trump signed an executive order on Sept. 5 adding the “Department of War” as a secondary, ceremonial title for the Department of Defense — should testify under oath before Congress amid questions about the legality of a deadly U.S. military attack Sept. 2 on a boat in the Caribbean, Trump said, “I don’t care if he does.”
“He can if he wants,” Trump said. “I don’t care.”
Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services said in a Dec. 3 statement that “in the fight against drugs, the end never justifies the means, which must be moral, in accord with the principles of the just war theory, and always respectful of the dignity of each human person.”
