Pope Francis says Donald Trump’s plan to deport illegal immigrants from the United States would be a “disgrace” if it comes to fruition.

Francis said in an interview with an Italian television program at the Vatican residence that if the plans went ahead, Trump would be a “poor man with no money to pay for it.”

“This is not right. This is not the way to solve the problem,” he said.

Trump promises to begin largest deportations of undocumented immigrants He entered American history shortly after taking office Monday afternoon.

The pope is known to take the immigration issue very seriously. In August last year, he said in a public interview that “systematically using all means to deport immigrants” was a “serious crime.”

In 2016, before Trump won his first presidential election, Pope Francis said “a person who only thinks about building walls…and not about building bridges is not a Christian.”

Referring to Trump’s pledge to build a wall on the Mexican border to stop migrants from entering the United States, Francis said: “I’m just saying that if this man says something like this, he is not a Christian. We have to see if he Said something like this in the United States: “This way I will give him the inference of innocence.” “

Francis and Trump later met when Trump and his family visited Rome in 2017.

Ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, the pope refused to say whether people should vote for Trump or his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, only urging people to choose the “lesser of two evils” according to their conscience.

In the interview on Sunday night, Francis also addressed the issue of immigration to Europe, saying there was “a lot of cruelty” and that everyone had “the right to stay at home and the right to immigrate.”

The pope added that some of the southern European countries that receive the most immigrants “have no children and need manpower.”

“In some of these countries, entire villages are empty. A good, well-thought-out immigration policy would also help countries like Italy and Spain,” he said.

In another part of the interview, Francis was asked about the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and said he didn’t know why making peace was so difficult.

“I don’t know why… the international community seems to have a tendency toward self-destruction,” the pope said.

Francis, 88, has held the post since he was elected in 2013 to succeed Pope Benedict XVI.