Pope Francis assailed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s views on U.S. immigration as “not Christian” on Thursday, prompting the billionaire businessman to assail the religious leader as “disgraceful” for questioning his faith.
Trump, the longtime party front-runner in national opinion polls, has been at the center of controversies, including one over his vow as president to build a wall between the United States and Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants.
In a freewheeling conversation on his flight home from a visit to Mexico, Francis told reporters: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
Trump, a real estate developer and former reality TV star, said: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by the ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president,” Trump said in a speech in South Carolina, using an acronym for the Islamic State militant group.
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