Responding to a question about the upcoming U.S. elections during his flight back from his latest international trip, Pope Francis said that Catholic voters in the U.S. will “have to choose the lesser evil” between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and that the choice needs to be made according to one’s own conscience.
Anna Matranga, a CBS journalist based in Italy asked Pope Francis during the press conference, “what advice can you give to a Catholic voter who has to decide between one candidate who is pro-life and another who would like to bring back 11 million migrants?”
Pope Francis started by saying that “both [candidates] are anti-life, either the one who throws out migrants or the one who kills babies. Both are against life.”
“I don’t want to say [who to vote for], I’m not from the United States, I’m not going to vote there.” said the Pontiff. “But let me be clear, both sending migrants away and not giving migrants ability to work, not giving migrants [a] welcome [is a] sin… is serious.”
“Migration,” Pope Francis continued, “is a right, it is a right that is in the Scripture. It [is] in the Old Testament.”
Addressing abortion, the Pope stated that “science says: at the month of conception there are all the organs of a human being. All of them! Doing [an abortion] is killing a human being. You like the word or you don’t like… but it is killing.”
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“The Church does not allow abortion because it kills,” he said. “It is murder, it is killing. And [in] this we have to be clear.”
The Pope later added that “sending migrants away, not letting them develop, not letting them have [a] life is a bad thing. Sending a baby away from its mother’s womb is murder because there is life.”
Matranga then asked a follow-up question: “In your opinion, Holiness, there cannot be circumstances in which it is morally permissible for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who is in favor of the termination of life in the morals of politics?”
“In the morals of politics it is generally said that not voting is bad,” said the Pope. “It is not good [to abstain], you have to vote and you have to choose the lesser evil. Who is the lesser evil? That lady [Harris] or that gentleman [Trump]? I don’t know, each one needs to think in conscience and do this [to vote].”
Pope Francis returned to Rome this week after completing the longest journey of his pontificate. As CatholicVote previously reported, the 12-day journey, which began September 2, included visits to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore. In Timor-Leste, an estimated 600,000 people attended the Mass for his visit.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
