In what sounded like a thinly veiled dig at Donald Trump, Pope Francis condemned the use of fear for political ends and said people shouldn’t be dedicating their energies to building walls. The pontiff didn’t, of course, mention Trump by name but there seems to be little doubt about who he was referring to during a speech at the Vatican this weekend.
“No tyranny can be sustained without exploiting our fears. This is clear,” Francis said at the Third World Meeting of Popular Movements. “All tyranny is terrorist. And when that terror, ignited in the peripheries with massacres, looting, oppression and injustice, explodes in the centers in the form of violence, including with hateful and cowardly intent, the citizens who still have some rights are tempted by the false security of walls, physical or social—walls that close some in and banish others.”
Francis also said that politics is no place for “anyone who is too attached to material things or to the mirror, those who love money, lavish banquets, sumptuous houses, refined clothes, luxury cars.”
This is not the first time Francis has made it clear that he isn’t a big fan of Trump or his proposals. In February he said that “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” Trump immediately criticized the pope for his comments then, calling them “disgraceful.”
