Pope Francis is warning American Catholic voters that they will have to make a choice between two “evils” in Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, arguing that each of their platforms stand “against life.”
The Catholic leader, speaking from the papal plane on Friday, framed the choice as between “lesser of two evils,” but conceded that “you have to vote.”
“One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know,” Pope Francis said.
The Holy See went on to attack Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and plans as sinful, as consistently argued since Trump first ran for office.
Earlier this year, Francis denounced efforts to close the southern border, saying Catholic doctrine rejected anti-immigrant sentiments.
“To send migrants away, to leave them wherever you want, to leave them … it’s something terrible, there is evil there,” the Pope said about Trump’s plan for the “bloody” mass deportation of tens of millions of people.
Pope Francis, who was called out earlier this year for his repeated use of homophobic slurs, denounced Harris’s plan to restore abortion access to Americans, too.
“To send away a child from the womb of the mother is an assassination, because there is life. We must speak about these things clearly,” Francis said.
American Catholics in 2020 voted 50% for Catholic Biden and 49% for Trump, per Pew Research.
