Pope Francis Takes Aim At JD Vance In Letter To US Bishops Protesting Trump’s ‘Mass Deportations’
Pope Francis took aim at Vice President JD Vance for invoking the Catholic theological concept of “ordo amoris” to justify the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, using the “true” meaning of the idea to call on US bishops to resist “mass deportations.”
The “order of charity” concept is rooted in the writings of 4th-century theologian St. Augustine, arguing Christians should “love everyone equally” but that, of course, “by the accidents of time or place or circumstance” each person of faith was limited by those within their reach.
However, Vance referenced the idea to justify prioritizing American citizens over immigrants, arguing in a Fox News interview that the “far left” had inverted the concept that love towards others begins with family and country before the “rest of the world.”
“Just google ‘ordo amoris,’” Vance later wrote on X, doubling down.
On Monday, Pope Francis took a direct swipe at not just the administration’s immigration agenda but also Vance, in a letter to bishops. While acknowledging the right of nations to protect themselves, Francis pulled no punches in criticizing the broader implications of mass deportations.
“The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” the Pope wrote.
Francis urged the US Catholic community to resist “narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”
The pontiff wrote: “This is not a minor issue: an authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized.”
In rebuke of Vance, he continued: “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation.”
“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan”, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” he added.
