The comments provided the latest indication of a potential renewal of friction between the Vatican and the next Trump White House.

"If it is true, it will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing to pay the unpaid bill," Francis said.

This is not the first time the pope has rebuked the president-elect’s position on illegal immigrants. In September 2024, Francis criticized then-candidates Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump when asked a question about the U.S. presidential election. The pope blasted Harris’s position on abortion and Trump’s immigration stance.

If this is true it is a disgrace because it makes the poor unfortunate who have nothing pay the price of imbalance. This is not how things are solved,” the pope said on Italian TV.

It’s also a topic which resonates personally with Francis. In his new autobiography, the Pope recalled how his paternal grandparents and father had planned to sail in 1927 on the Principessa Mafalda from Italy to Argentina, which sank with the loss of many lives, but ended up making a later crossing.

Pope Francis on Sunday criticized President-elect Donald Trump's reported plan to sharply intensify immigration enforcement actions across the U.S. in the days after his inauguration.

Pope Francis called President-elect Donald Trump's plans for the deportation of illegal immigrants a "disgrace."

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis said Donald Trump’s plans to impose mass deportations of immigrants would be a “disgrace,” as he weighed in on the incoming U.S. president’s pledges nearly a decade after calling him “not Christian” for wanting to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Francis took aim at Trump’s hardline immigration stance in 2016, saying anyone who builds a wall to shut out immigrants was ‘not Christian.’

Pope Francis said Donald Trump’s plans to impose mass deportations of immigrants would be a “disgrace,” as he weighed in on the incoming U.S. president’s pledges nearly a decade after calling