Politicians who call themselves pro-life must be pro-family and not enact policies that divide families and rob young people of a future, Pope Francis has said.
Flying from Colombia to Rome on Sunday night Pope Francis was asked about President Donald Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, which allowed 800,000 young people brought to the United States illegally as children to stay in the country, working or going to school.
Mr Trump announced last week that he was phasing out the programme. His decision was strongly criticised by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Pope Francis said he had heard of Mr Trump’s decision, but had not had time to study the details of the issue. However, he said, “uprooting young people from their families is not something that will bear fruit”.
“This law, which I think comes not from the legislature, but from the executive – if that’s right, I’m not sure – I hope he rethinks it a bit,” the Pope said, “because I’ve heard the President of the United States speak; he presents himself as a man who is pro-life, a good pro-lifer. If he is a good pro-lifer, he understands that the family is the cradle of life and its unity must be defended.”
Pope Francis said that people must not dash the hopes and dreams of young people or make them feel “a bit exploited”, because the results can be disastrous, leading some to turn to drugs or even suicide. Pope Francis spent about 35 minutes answering journalists’ questions and commenting on his five-day trip to Colombia. After he had answered eight questions, Greg Burke, director of the Vatican press office, told the Pope it was time to sit down because the plane was approaching an area of turbulence.
The Pope went to the journalists’ section of the plane still wearing a small bandage on his left eyebrow and sporting a large bump, which had turned black and blue, on his cheek.
He told them that he had been reaching out of the Popemobile to greet the people and turned suddenly. “I didn’t see the glass,” he said.
Pope unites victims and former rebel soldiers
Pope Francis has urged Colombians to summon the courage to make peace at a prayer service for victims and perpetrators of violence that took place under the gaze of a bomb-damaged crucifix.
Symbolically presiding over the event last Friday was a statue of Jesus whose arms and legs were blown off in 2002 when a bomb crashed through the roof of a church. At least 79 people died, almost half of them children.
“I am standing on sacred ground,” the Pope said at the service, “a land watered by the blood of thousands of innocent victims and by the heart-breaking sorrow of their families and friends.”
In 2016, leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) apologised for the massacre in the Bojaya church, saying it had been caught in the crossfire during a fight with a paramilitary group.
Referring to the bombing, Pope Francis said: “They have torn away your children who sought refuge in you.” He prayed that Christ would help “us to commit ourselves to restoring your body”.
“May we be your feet that go forth to encounter our brothers and sisters in need; your arms to embrace those who have lost their dignity; your hands to bless and console those who weep alone,” Pope Francis prayed.
The ceremony was one of the highlights of a five-day trip in which Pope Francis beatified a bishop and priest martyred during political violence. Two papal Masses drew more than a million pilgrims each. On the Pope’s last day he prayed for Venezuela and called “for the cessation of every kind of violence in political life”.
Pontiff: the drugs trade sows death and destroys families
In his final Mass in Colombia Pope Francis departed from his prepared speech to strongly denounce the drugs trade.
He said the illegal business had “put an end to so many lives and is sustained by unscrupulous men. I’m making a call so that we explore all ways to end narcotics trafficking. The only thing it has done is sow death all over the place, truncating so many hopes and destroying so many families.”
During the Mass, celebrated at the docks in Cartagena, on Colombia’s north coast, Pope Francis called for Colombians to meet the “culture of death and violence with the culture of life and encounter”.
“How many times have we ‘normalised’ the logic of violence and social exclusion, without prophetically raising our hands or voices?” he asked. He recalled St Peter Claver, who tended to slaves arriving on ships, saying: “Alongside St Peter Claver were thousands of Christians, many of them consecrated, but only a handful started a countercultural movement of encounter.”
A day earlier he prayed before the bones of St Peter Claver and said that today “millions of people are being sold as slaves”.
Francis ‘saves suicidal woman’
An acid attack victim who planned to die by euthanasia has changed her mind after talking to Pope Francis. Consuela Cordoba, who has undergone 87 operations and also has a brain infection, hugged the Pope and asked for his permission to end her life. He refused, saying she was “very brave and very pretty”.
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