As president Donald Trump was being sworn in, Pope Francis told an interviewer it would be “reckless” to pass judgment on the new president before he had a chance to do anything.
“We must wait and see,” the Pope told two reporters from the Spanish newspaper El País during a 75-minute interview published last Saturday.
Asked if he wasn’t worried about some of the things Trump said before his election, the Pope responded: “I’m waiting. God waited so long for me, with all my sins.
“Being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view, quite reckless,” he said. “We will see. We will see what he does and then we will judge – always on the concrete. Christianity either is concrete or it is not Christianity.”
El Pais then asked about Mr Trump and populists in the United States and Europe who “capitalise on fear in the face of an uncertain future in order to form a message full of xenophobia and hatred towards the foreigner”.
“Crises provoke fear, alarm,” the Pope said. “In my opinion, the most obvious example of European populism is Germany in 1933. After Hindenburg, after the crisis of 1930, Germany is broken, it needs to get up, to find its identity, a leader, someone capable of restoring its character, and there is a young man named Adolf Hitler who says: ‘I can, I can.’ Hitler didn’t steal the power, his people voted for him, and then he destroyed his people.”
In times of crisis, he said, large segments of the population think, “Let’s look for a saviour who gives us back our identity and let’s defend ourselves with walls, barbed wire, whatever, from other peoples who may rob us of our identity. And that is a very serious thing.”
US bishops ask Congress to keep parts of Obamacare
The chairman of the American bishops’ domestic policy committee has said that repeal of the federal health care law should not take place without immediate passage of a plan that preserves people’s access to adequate care.Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida, said that “important gains brought about by the Affordable Care Act must be preserved” as millions now rely on the law for their healthcare.
At the same time, he said, any replacement measure must also safeguard human life from conception to natural death, protect conscience rights and provide adequate health care for immigrants, the poor and others on society’s margins.
Bishop Dewane made the comments in a letter to members of Congress and the US Senate.
The US bishops, he said, “supported the general goal of the law to expand medical coverage for many poor and vulnerable people”, but they “ultimately opposed the Affordable Care Act because it expanded the role of the federal government in finding and facilitating abortion and plans that cover abortion.”
Pro-lifers excluded from march
Organisers of a feminist protest against Donald Trump’s inauguration have refused to acknowledge the participation of pro-lifers.A number of pro-life groups were removed from the list of partner organisations of the Women’s March in Washington. But pro-lifers said they would join the march anyway. The organisers of the event, which drew 500,000 people, said it had been pro-choice “from day one”.
