Pope Francis forcefully injected himself into the US presidential campaign on Thursday, assailing Republican candidate Donald Trump's views on US immigration as "not Christian".
Mr Trump struck back. No stranger to controversy, the longtime party front-runner in national opinion polls dismissed the leader of the world's Roman Catholics as "disgraceful" for questioning his faith. He said he was a proud Christian.
Pope Francis told reporters during a free-wheeling conversation on his flight home from a visit to Mexico: "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian."
Mr Trump has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug-runners across the United States’ southern border and has vowed if elected president to build a wall to keep out immigrants who enter illegally.
It was not the first time US allies have voiced concern over comments by Mr Trump.
More than half a million Britons signed a petition to bar him from entering Britain, where he has business interests, in response to his call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States. British lawmakers decided against a ban as a violation of free speech.
Asked if American Catholics should vote for someone with Mr Trump’s views, Francis said: “I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.”
It remained to be seen if the pope's comments would strengthen Mr Trump in the run-up to the November 8th election to succeed Democratic president Barack Obama. Mr Trump's swipes at rival candidates and heated exchanges with others have bolstered his standing in nominating contests and opinion polls.
One of Mr Trump's Republican rivals, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, speaking in Columbia, South Carolina, said he would not question anyone's relationship with God. But Mr Bush, a Catholic, said: "It only enables bad behaviour when someone from outside our country talks about Donald Trump. "
Islamic State
Mr Trump, a real estate developer and former reality TV show host, said: “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.”
Mr Trump was in South Carolina, which on Saturday will hold a Republican nominating contest.
At a later town hall meeting televised on CNN, Mr Trump said he had “a lot of respect” for Francis but that the pope had been influenced by hearing only Mexico’s side of the border issue. The pope’s statement also had been exaggerated by the media, he said.
“I think he said something much softer than it was originally reported by the media. I think that he heard one side of the story, which is probably by the Mexican government,” he said. “He didn’t see the tremendous strain that the border is causing us with respect to illegal immigration, with the drugs pouring across the border.”
‘A political person’
Mr Trump has said he would deport millions of illegal immigrants if he wins the White House. Last week, responding to the pope’s plan to visit the US-Mexican border, he said Pope Francis did not understand the issues.
“The pope is a very political person ... I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico,” Mr Trump told the Fox Business Network.
Asked about being called a “political person,” Francis said on Thursday: “Thank God he said I was a politician because Aristotle defined the human person as ‘animal politicus.’ So at least I am a human person.”
Republican Catholics appear to support Mr Trump more than other Republicans do, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll that showed 43 per cent of likely Republican Catholic voters supported Mr Trump, compared with 38 per cent of Republican voters generally.
The Pew Research Center has said 71 per cent of the US population identifies as Christian. That includes the 21 percent of the US population that identifies as Catholic.
Reuters