Vatican: Pope was not singling out Trump with his remarks

“Please contain yourself. Pope Francis wants to greet us, but if we pile up, it will be hard to do so”, an announcer for the Pope said as quoted by CNN.

“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful”, Trump said. And that’s the fact that he basically said something many of them support is “not Christian”. He has declared that, if elected, he intends to construct a 2,500 kilometre wall along the border between Mexico and the United States, and to deport eleven million illegal immigrants, thus separating families, and so on. In the heat of the USA presidential primaries, Pope Francis weighed in when asked about Trump’s policies during his Mexico visit. Those last two jabs were a shot at Trump’s famous golden toilet in his Boeing 757 and his trademark hair, which Colbert equates to the papal throne in the Vatican and the Pope’s mitre, respectively.

“He didn’t see the crime, the drug trafficking and the negative economic impact the current policies have on the United States”.

Lombardi told Vatican Radio that the pope’s comments, made to reporters during a flight back from Mexico in response to a specific question on Trump, were simply an affirmation of his long-standing belief that migrants should be helped rather than shut off behind walls.

While the Pope said he would “give the benefit of the doubt” because he had not heard Mr Trump’s border plans independently, he added: “I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that”.

Trump also raised the prospect of the Islamic State extremist group attacking the Vatican, saying that if that happened, “the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened”.

Cruz said he was steering clear of the dispute.

“As far as what you said about whether I would advise to vote or not to vote, I am not going to get involved in that”.

The obvious answer is that he doesn’t want to alienate Catholic voters, who make up about 20% of the American electorate and likely don’t want to see politicians pontificating about their Pope.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, on the other hand, said he was staunchly “pro-Pope”. They’re sending people that have lots of problems… But he seemed quite pleased to hear that Mr Trump had called him a “political” figure, noting that Aristotle had described the human being as a “political animal”.

However, Trump softened his tone when pressed by the host about getting into fights with a number of people but with the Pope as well.

Finally, while we don’t have good data on how many American Christians favour a border wall, Americans overall are pretty split, with 45 per cent in favour and 49 per cent against, according to a January CBS News/New York Times poll.

Trump said Mexican authorities had told the pope only “one side of the story”.