We’ll never see Pope Francis don a MAGA hat, but those who heed the Pope’s advice about the 2024 presidential election may do it. Pope Francis said that Americans should vote for the lesser of two evils in the election and that both candidates are anti-life. He effectively said Donald Trump is anti-migrant and Kamala Harris is a baby-killer. Pope Francis claimed to not know which candidate is the lesser evil, but one criticism is harsher than the other. “Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies,″ he recently told reporters.
The Pope called abortion the assassination of an unborn baby. "Forcing a child from the mother's womb is an assassination because there is life there," he said. He also said being anti-migrant is mean. “Expelling migrants, not letting them develop, not letting them have a life is an ugly thing, it's mean.”
That makes for an easy decision. Vote for Trump.
Notice there’s no moral equivalence between the two sins. The rebuke of Harris for supporting abortion in all three trimesters with no restrictions is far worse than Trump being anti-migrant. That’s because the Pope, correctly, understands that abortion kills a human being—and killing a human being is far worse than not letting them come to your country to receive government handouts.
Trump was wrong to say that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are stealing people’s cats and dogs and eating them, but mass migration from that failed country is causing us problems. It’s a fiscal strain for states like Massachusetts that put Haitian migrants up in long-term stays in hotels and motels and one that has left homeless Massachusetts families unable to get spots in the state’s emergency shelter system. When the state’s governor enacts emergency budget cuts that defund essential services like fire departments to fund a magnet for mass legal and illegal migration, that’s a problem. Motels jacking up rates and demanding weekly payments from the working poor who lived there long-term also forced some people to go live in their cars; there’s nothing wrong with taking care of our own before we help everyone else.
Pope Francis is correct when he says that migrants have the right to make their case to claim asylum, but our country has no obligation to let every single person in at the expense of working people. Conversely, the Catholic viewpoint can’t morally justify elective abortion, the overwhelming majority of abortions. Yes to treating miscarriages and abortions that protect the mother’s life, but otherwise, no.
People on both sides were unhappy with the Pope, but the liberals in social media comment sections were angrier. I saw remarks about how the Pope’s opinion lacks relevance and that taxing churches is necessary. Anyone who says the leader of the largest religious organization’s opinion doesn’t matter is a liar. The Pope’s among the most influential voices in the world regarding morality. And I dare any politician to run on taxing churches.
Catholic values also call for reducing poverty and gun violence, taking care of the environment, access to affordable healthcare, opposing unjust war, and standing up for workers’ rights. As someone who has many disagreements with the Republican Party on those issues, I vote accordingly in statewide referenda (not that war, a bipartisan affair, comes up). However, Catholicism teaches us that rejecting woke gender ideology and standing up for religious freedom are also highly important.
Earlier this year, Pope Francis called gender ideology the “worst danger” of our time because it erases the differences between men and women. Unfortunately, like abortion, it’s something that members of both political parties support, but the Democrats are undoubtedly worse on the issue.
Liberal politicians like Kamala Harris and Maize Hirono are also anti-Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s organization founded to combat anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States. It’s also an organization that donates hundreds of millions of dollars to charity each year and donates tens of millions of hours of volunteer work. Both politicians used it as a tool to go after nominated judges in hearings—because they disliked the Catholic view of abortion and the traditional family unit.
Donald Trump has immense personal flaws, a shoddy relationship with the truth, and isn’t staunch defender of life, but in an election between him and Harris, Trump is the Catholic choice.
