Pope Francis said Wednesday that the fear of immigration “makes us crazy” as he made his way to Panama for World Youth Day.
“It is the fear that makes us crazy,” the pope, the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, told reporters.
Francis has criticized the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies before, arguing that we must build “bridges, not walls.”
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel,” he said in 2016.
Francis also told lawmakers in his speech to Congress in September of that year not to be “fearful of foreigners.”
President Trump responded by calling Francis a “political person.”
“I think the Pope is a very political person,” Trump said at the time. “I think he doesn’t understand the problems our country has.”