Pope Francis enraged: How Trump sparked fury with shocking ‘ISIS will attack Vatican’ jibe

Mr Trump announced that he would “build a wall” on the US-Mexico border to deal with illegal immigration, even claiming that the Central American country would pay for it. Pope Francis would deride the policy, as he was joined by Democrat opponents as well as progressives around the world to condemn the move. The Vatican leader, who has made compassion for refugees and openness to immigration a key message of his papacy, appeared to describe Mr Trump as “not Christian”.

Pope Francis said in 2016: “A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. That is not the gospel.”

But this would spark an even more animated response from the soon-to-be President, who made a hugely provocative claim about an ISIS attack on the Vatican.

“If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which, as everyone knows, is ISIS’ ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.”

The Republican Party candidate even dubbed the Pope as “disgraceful”.

He said: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”

Despite the animated response, the head of the Catholic Church would not be dissuaded from criticising the policy in the future.

He said in April 2019: “Those who build walls will become prisoners of the walls they put up. This is history.”

This echoed his statement in March 2019 when he said: “If you raise a wall between people, you end up a prisoner of that wall that you raised.”

Earlier in the same year while speaking in Panama, Pope Francis said: “Builders of walls sow fear.”

READ MORE:Pope Francis warns against ‘personal attacks’ amid Catholic feuds

Archbishop Salvatore J Cordileone of San Francisco told Crux that the Pope “brought up the polarisation in society and how this is affecting the Church”.

Cordileone also revealed that Pope Francis had said that while people “attack each other” in election discourse, something similar is “sometimes happening in the Church when different factions try to find something to attack people on personally”.

He added that the Vatican leader criticised the two-party system in the US, as there’s “more of a tendency” for divisive discourse.

source: express.co.uk