If you’ve ever wondered how terrible a person must be to get the pope to condemn them, look no further than GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
At the World Meeting of Popular Movements at the Vatican on Saturday, Pope Francis spoke about the danger of building walls to keep people out and “false prophets that exploit fear and hopelessness to sell magical formulas of hate and cruelty.”
Sound familiar?
Francis never uttered Trump’s name, and, as The Atlantic points out, his comments could generally apply to other leaders. But it’s hard not to think of Trump himself when the pope talks about walls.
“No tyranny can be sustained without exploiting our fears. This is clear,” Francis said at the event, speaking in Spanish. “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.”
In the past, Francis has been a little more blunt with his thoughts:
“A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis told reporters in February.
In response to the criticism at the time, Trump called the holy man “disgraceful” and accused Mexico of using him as a pawn.
Editor’s Note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist,birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.