A brief history of Trump’s feud with Pope Francis
President Trump has acknowledged the pope’s death in a one-line post on Truth Social, writing: “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!”
Trump and Francis clashed repeatedly in recent years.
Trump praised the pope at the start of Francis’s papacy, in 2013, several years before Trump reached the White House.
“The new Pope is a humble man, very much like me, which probably explains why I like him so much!” Trump tweeted in December of that year, several months after Francis became pope.
Things soured soon after. During the 2016 election, Francis roundly criticized Trump’s campaign proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Canada border.
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said at the time.
Trump — who aggressively courted evangelical Christian leaders and voters during his campaign — fired back immediately, saying, “for a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”
“If and when the Vatican is attacked by 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 because this would not have happened,” he added.
Trump met the Pope during a 2017 trip to the Vatican, later telling reporters: “He is something. We had a fantastic meeting.” A photo from the visit, in which Trump is smiling next to a glum-looking Francis, quickly went viral.
Nearly a decade later, amidst the second Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, the pope once again made a rare public rebuke of the president’s policies.
In a public letter to U.S. Catholic bishops, February, Francis described the program of mass deportations as a “major crisis.”
He said while nations have the right to defend themselves, “the rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”
“The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” Francis wrote.
The letter also appeared to respond to widely-criticized comments that Vice President Vance, who is Catholic, had made weeks earlier. Vance said people should care for their family, communities and country before caring for others — and Francis disagreed.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” the pope wrote.
Auburn fires coach Hugh Freeze following 12th loss in his last 15 SEC games
The 56-year-old Freeze failed to fix Auburn’s offensive issues in three years on the Plains, scoring 24 or fewer points in 17 of his 22 league games. He also ended up on the wrong end of too many close matchups, including twice this season thanks partly to questionable calls.
In a ‘disheartening’ era, the nation’s former top mining regulator speaks out
Joe Pizarchik, who led the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement from 2009 to 2017, says Alabama’s move in the wake of a fatal 2024 home explosion increases risks to residents living atop “gassy” coal mines.
‘It’s like feeling the arms of your creator just wrapped around you’: a visit to a special healing Shabbat
Members of Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham gathered recently for their traditional Friday Shabbat service. But this particular service was different, as could be seen by all the people dressed in their finest pink.
Space Command is coming to Huntsville. What might that mean for first-time homebuyers
While Huntsville has been a more affordable market than other growing cities, what’s it been like for those looking for their first home?
Colorado says relocation of Space Command to Alabama is ‘punishment’ for mail-in voting
The litigation announced by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser asks a federal judge to block the move as unconstitutional.
Breaking down Alabama’s CHOOSE Act
It’s been a year since Alabama legislators passed the CHOOSE Act allowing families to apply for state funds to use towards homeschool expenses and tuition for participating private schools. The Alabama Daily News’ education reporter Trisha Powell Crain has been diving into how the funds are being used. WBHM’s Andrew Gelderman sat down with her to talk about what we’re seeing so far.
