WHAT HAPPENED TO SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE ???

Trump and Pope Francis clash over immigration, another extraordinary campaign twist
Tribune Washington Bureau David Lauter and Noah Bierman           

 

WASHINGTON — Two of the most visible figures on the international stage, Pope Francis and Donald Trump, exchanged heated words over immigration Thursday, creating another dramatic twist in an extraordinary political year.

The long-distance volley, impelled, like so much of the campaign, by Trump's language on Mexican immigration, created a moment that actually merits the overused label "unprecedented."
No previous pope has as pointedly commented on a central issue in a U.S. presidential campaign as Francis did in his remarks to reporters on his plane, flying back to the Vatican after his trip to Mexico.
"A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they are, and not in building bridges, is not Christian," the pope said, in response to a question about Trump's oft-repeated vow to build a wall along the Mexican border. "That is not part of the gospel," he said, in Italian.
And no major presidential candidate has so sharply criticized a major religious leader as Trump did in reply.
"For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful," Trump said in a written statement, in which he suggested the Mexican government had manipulated the pope.
"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," Trump said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

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