ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE \u2014 Pope Francis, putting President Trump on notice, warned on Sunday that those who close borders \u201cwill become prisoners of the walls that they build.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The remarks came as the pope was returning from a visit to Morocco, where he worked to further his priorities of supporting migrants and establishing closer relations between the Roman Catholic Church and moderate Islam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. Trump threatened Friday to seal off the border<\/a> with Mexico and moved to cut aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to punish them for failing to stop a surge in migrant crossings into the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Francis, who suggested in 2016 that Mr. Trump was \u201cnot Christian\u201d<\/a> for his belief in building walls, rather than bridges, was also asked aboard the papal airplane about the Spanish government\u2019s efforts to keep out migrants<\/a>, many of whom depart from Morocco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said he could not imagine the \u201ccruelty\u201d of using barbed wire to stop people seeking better lives in Spain, adding, \u201cThis is not a way to resolve the grave problem of migration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pope\u2019s remarks were in keeping with his two-day trip to Rabat, Morocco\u2019s capital, where he offered his support on Sunday to the country\u2019s tiny Christian population<\/a>. He began the day visiting Spanish nuns who provide medical care to children and teach women to read; he then spoke at the Cathedral of Rabat, where he greeted a 95-year-old monk who survived a 1996 massacre in Algeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a country with only 46 priests and 178 nuns \u2014 most of them foreigners, like Morocco\u2019s two Spanish bishops \u2014 the faithful hardly filled half of the cathedral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the pope used that as an opportunity. \u201cChristians are a small minority in this country,\u201d he said. \u201cYet, to my mind, this is not a problem, even though I realize that at times it can be difficult for some of you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Francis compared them to \u201ca little yeast that Mother Church wants to mix in with a great quantity of flour until all of it is leavened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said that a preoccupation with numbers \u2014 to \u201coccupy all the spaces\u201d \u2014 missed the point. Proselytism is a dead end, he said, while leading by example is the key to the faith\u2019s vitality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor being a Christian is not about adhering to a doctrine, or a temple or an ethnic group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He thanked local clerics and religious leaders for helping Muslims, the poor and migrants, saying, \u201cIn this way, you will unmask and lay bare every attempt to exploit differences and ignorance in order to sow fear, hatred and conflict.\u201dCatholics at a Mass performed by the pope in Rabat. Pope Francis encouraged Catholics \u201cto continue to let the culture of mercy grow.\u201dCreditMosa’Ab Elshamy\/Associated Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pope then went to the Complex Sportif Prince Moulay Abdellah arena, where a jubilant chorus of Christians from sub-Saharan Africa sang and the stands were filled with about 10,000 people. In his homily, the pope spoke about the return of the prodigal son, and how the warm reception he was given upset his older brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat we see here yet again is the tension we experience in our societies and in our communities, and even in our own hearts,\u201d Francis said. \u201cI encourage you to continue to let the culture of mercy grow, a culture in which no one looks at others with indifference, or averts his eyes in the face of their suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the flight home, the pope said that his visits to Morocco and other Muslim nations had yielded no obvious fruits yet but that a spirit of brotherhood was \u201cthe real flower.\u201d In every religious group, he said, there are \u201cfundamentalist groups\u201d that seed hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier Sunday, Italy\u2019s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the anti-immigrant League party, spoke at an anti-abortion gathering in Verona<\/a> that has become a preferred forum for hard-right conservatives with strong links to Russia. Asked about Mr. Salvini\u2019s comment that when it came to women, \u201cthe real danger is Islam,\u201d Pope Francis shook his head and said coyly, \u201cItalian politics, I don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the pope spoke more broadly about Europe\u2019s tilt toward populism. Catholics and other people of good will who support such leaders, he said, are influenced by a populism that \u201cplants fear.\u201d He worried that Europe was not heeding the lessons of the last century. \u201cFear is the beginning of dictatorship,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also warned against quickly judging Muslim countries for their relative lack of freedom of religion, arguing that it will evolve as it has in Catholic cultures. Centuries ago, the church supported the death penalty, he noted, something it now finds abhorrent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But he added, \u201cWe, too, have this problem,\u201d arguing that the free conscience of Catholics, including doctors, was often infringed on in liberal countries where they were forced to perform procedures against their beliefs, including he said, euthanasia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Francis touched on existential problems within the church, which faces eroding trust because of clerical sexual abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the flight, Francis said that because an appeal is underway he had rejected the resignation<\/a> of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, France, who has been sentenced to a six-month prison term after being found guilty of covering up sexual abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI can\u2019t accept it because judicially there is a presumption of innocence,\u201d Francis said. He continued, \u201cWe will see what happens,\u201d adding, \u201cperhaps he\u2019s not innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pope also commented explicitly for the first time about his decision last year to unexpectedly postpone votes by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on proposals to address sexual abuse. They included the creation of a commission to review abuse allegations against bishops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Francis said the proposals were \u201ctoo much\u201d like a lay nonprofit organization and did not take into account the need to confront the \u201cmystery of evil\u201d at work in clerical sex abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe church is not a congregationalist church,\u201d the pope said. \u201cIt is a Catholic Church, where the bishop must take on the responsibility, like a pastor. The pope must take on the responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE \u2014 Pope Francis, putting President Trump on notice, warned on Sunday that those who close borders \u201cwill become prisoners of the walls that they build.\u201d The remarks came as the pope was returning from a visit to Morocco, where he worked to further his priorities of supporting migrants and establishing closer relations between the Roman Catholic… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3549,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions\/3549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}