Pope Francis touches his eyes when he is chairman of a mass for the anniversary of the armed forces at St. Peter’s square on the Vatican.Alessandra Tarantino/AP

Reprinted with permission from national Catholic reporter www.ncronline.org.

On the way to Marseille, France, to the headline a migration conference in September 2023 spoke Pope Francis with reporters when he offered undesirable praise for El Paso -Bishop Mark Seitz and his strong support from migrants and refugees.

It was not the first time he had designated Texas Border Bishop. “I don’t know if he’s conservative, or if he’s progressive, if he’s right or left, but he’s a good pastor,” commented The pope in an interview in December 2022.

Since the beginning of his Pavedi 2013 there has been a recurring accusation That Francis fails to understand the United States. While he may not regularly break bread with American neoconservatives in the way the last two popes were known To do, it is an unfair and incorrect accusation of taking out the first pope of history from the global south.

Franci’s knowledge is informed by regular Conversations He has with us prelates who are often visitors to Rome and through meetings he convenes with groups such as West/Southwest Industrial Area Foundation that has met With the Pope Over the past three years for free -going conversations about the situation of migrants and US political life.

And to replenish it, according to his public calendar, Francis meets every Saturday morning with Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost, who advises the Pope on the bishop’s appointments around the world. Certainly he gets abundant information from the United States from these figures.

Given this context, it is not exactly surprising that after the election of an American president who has promised to deport millions of undocumented migrants, the Pope may have some things to say.

After all, this is a pontiff who chose to Visit the small Italian island of Lampedusa on his very first trip outside Rome after his choice as the Pope to pay tribute to the life of migrants lost at sea and illustrate “globalization of indifference” against their difficulties.

So this week, February 11, when Vatican published a letter From the Pope to us bishops warns that Trump’s mass expulsion plans would “quit poorly” and reject the administration’s characterization of migrants as criminals, no one would have been shocked by Franci’s concern.

According to a senior Vatican’s official who talked about the condition of anonymity, the Pope has closely followed answers from the US prelates to Trump’s attacks on migrants and he expects them to offer a united front when they oppose some mass expulsion efforts.

What is new with the latest papal correspondence, however, is the way in which the Pope directly responded to a new effort from Vice President JD Vance to use Catholic theology to justify the immigration of the Trump administration.

Vance, which converted to Catholisism in 2019, invoked the ancient theological concept Ordo Amoris To argue in a Fox News interview and later on social media platform X that “you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your citizens in your own country. And then after that Can you focus and prioritize the rest of the world. ”

The pope did not buy it.

“Christian Love is not a concentric expansion of interests that a little bit through a little extends to other people and groups,” Francis wrote in his letter to us bishops. “The true Ordo Amoris It must be promoted is what we discover by constantly meditating the parable of the “good Samaritan” that is, by meditating the love that builds a brotherhood open to everyone, without exception. “

The Vatican White House exchange is almost outstanding in modern history.

Catholic Theologian Massimo Faggioli, author of the recently published book From God to Trump: Catholic crisis and American politicstold me: “It is very shocking to see the Pope reject what a Catholic vice president has said in an interview.”

While cultural war has always collapsed when it comes to marriage and family issues, Faggioli said what is new to this present moment is Vance’s choice to directly use Roman Catholic theology to drive the White House’s agenda.

What may once have been a political conflict has escalated into a theological one.

The prominent Italian Church Historian Alberto Melloni told me that Francis, in writing to the American bishops, uses a similar tool as Pope Pius XI, when he condemned the action Française in the 1920s – a nationalist French political movement that bumped by many by the country’s Catholics.

“If Trump believes that right -wing catholics are a trumpian Catholic church, says the Pope of Rome him” move on, make my day, “Melloni said from Francis” letter.

Faggioli agreed with Melloni’s assessment, but offered another parallel: Pope Leo XIII’s letter from 1899, Testem Benevolentiae nostrae (“Witness to our good will”), warns us Catholics about the dangers of “Americanism” – especially expressed by an overwhelming connection to individual freedom.

“Right now this is something similar, but it’s more interesting,” Faggioli said. “Now Pope Francis basically asks us Catholics to remember what America is all about. And it is an interesting twist of history. “

While Francis – and the latest popes – has written letters aimed at special bishops’ conferences and countries, the extent of these letters has been significantly different. In 2018 Francis wrote to Chilean bishops To deal with the increasing priestly abuse crisis in that country and in 2024 Francis wrote to Catholics in Nicaragua to express their closeness as they endured religious persecution.

But in its latest letter, the Pope is explicitly occupied by what it means to be Catholic. According to faggioli, it is an attempt to protect that identity and ensure that the theology of the Church is not perverse.

“The Pope has increased the confrontation,” he said. “And here we have two moral views about the world that clearly collides.”

The national Catholic reporter’s Rome agency is partly made possible by the generosity of Joan and Bob McGrath.