Pope criticises Harris and Trump as he urges Catholics to vote for ‘lesser evil’
Pope Francis has criticised both US presidential candidates for what he called anti-life policies on abortion and migration, as he advised American Catholics to choose who they think is the âlesser evilâ in the upcoming election.
âBoth are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies,â Pope Francis said.
The Argentine Jesuit was asked to provide counsel to American Catholic voters during an airborne news conference while he flew back to Rome from his four-nation tour through Asia. He stressed that he is not an American and would not be voting.
Neither Republican candidate Donald Trump nor the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, was mentioned by name.
But Francis nevertheless expressed himself in stark terms when asked to weigh in on their positions on two hot-button issues in the US election â abortion and migration â that are also of major concern to the Catholic Church.
Francis has made the plight of migrants a priority of his pontificate and speaks out emphatically and frequently about it.

While strongly upholding church teaching forbidding abortion, Francis has not emphasised church doctrine as much as his predecessors.
Francis said migration is a right described in Scripture and that anyone who does not follow the Biblical call to welcome the stranger is committing a âgrave sin.â
He was also blunt in speaking about abortion. âTo have an abortion is to kill a human being. You may like the word or not, but itâs killing,â he said. âWe have to see this clearly.â
Asked what voters should do at the polls, Francis recalled the civic duty to vote.
âOne should vote, and choose the lesser evil,â he said. âWho is the lesser evil, the woman or man? I donât know.â
âEveryone in their conscience should think and do it,â he said.
Itâs not the first time Francis has weighed in on a US election.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Francis was asked about Trumpâs plan to build a wall at the US-Mexico border. Francis declared then that anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants âis not Christian.â
In responding on Friday, Francis recalled that he celebrated Mass at the US-Mexico border and âthere were so many shoes of the migrants who ended up badly there.â
Trump pledges massive deportations, just as he did in his first White House bid, when there was a vast gulf between his ambitions and the legal, financial and political realities of such an undertaking.
The US bishops conference, for its part, has called abortion the âpreeminent priorityâ for American Catholics in its published voter advice.
Harris has strongly defended abortion rights and has emphasised support for reinstating a federal right to abortion.
In his comments, the pope added: âOn abortion, science says that a month from conception, all the organs of a human being are already there, all of them.
âPerforming an abortion is killing a human being. Whether you like the word or not, this is killing. You canât say the church is closed because it does not allow abortion. The church does not allow abortion because itâs killing. It is murder.â
However, cells are only beginning the process of developing organs in the earliest weeks of pregnancy.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that by 13 weeks, all major organs have formed. For example, cardiac tissue starts to form in the first two months â initially a tube that only later evolves into the four chambers that define a heart.
Additional reporting by AP