Weighing in on two areas of disagreement with a U.S. president with whom he has already clashed, Pope Francis said Monday that climate science is clearly true and that President Trump should allow young immigrants to stay in the United States if he is truly “pro-life.”
In the same conversation with reporters aboard a plane leaving Colombia after a five-day trip to his native South America, Francis returned to the subject of climate change, a favorite for the wonky pontiff who was a scientist early in his career. Anyone who doubts that the climate is changing should listen to scientists, who “speak very clearly,” he said.
Francis has a long habit of making some of his most pointed political comments while giving news conferences on his plane flights. It was on a plane during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign that the pope said that Trump’s plan of building a wall on the Mexican border “is not Christian.” Despite tension over that remark and subsequent differences of opinion, Francis and Trump met at the Vatican in May — and Francis pushed the issue of climate change in person, handing Trump a copy of his own science-laden encyclical about the moral responsibility to protect the environment, just as Trump was mulling his eventual decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord.
On DACA, Francis said that he would like to study the American policy more thoroughly, but he is troubled by the possibility of young immigrants in any nation being compelled to move away from their families. He expressed interest in Congress extending what Trump plans to end, saying he has “hope that it can be rethought a little.”
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