ROME (Reuters) -Pope Leo renewed his criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump’s hard-line anti-immigration policies on Tuesday, saying foreigners living in the United States were being treated by the administration in a manner that was “extremely disrespectful”.
Speaking to reporters in Castel Gandolfo, his residence outside Rome, the pope called for people in the U.S. “to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.”
Leo, the first U.S. pontiff, has expressed his disapproval of the Trump administration’s targeting of immigrants in increasingly strong terms in recent weeks.
In September, he called their treatment “inhuman”, drawing a heated backlash from some prominent conservative Catholics.
Leo was asked by a journalist on Tuesday about a November 13 statement from the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, which rebuked the Trump administration’s polices and called for “meaningful immigration reform.”
“It’s a very important statement,” the pope said. ” I would just invite all people in the United States to listen to them.”
He said individual countries have a right to police their borders, but that many immigrants in the U.S. are “living good lives” and they were being treated “in a way that is extremely disrespectful, to say the least”.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee, editing by Gavin Jones)
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