International
Pope Francis and Trump, a relationship of disagreements marked by migration
The relationship between the late Pope Francis and the US President, Donald Trump, has been marked by several disagreements, especially by the pontiff’s critical position on the Republican leader’s immigration policies.
Trump and his wife Melania will travel to Rome to attend Francisco’s funeral, which will take place this Saturday, a trip that the president himself confirmed, who conveyed his condolences yesterday.
“Rest in peace, Pope Francis! May God bless him and all those who loved him!” he wrote.
In addition, he signed an executive order for US flags to fly at half-mast until sunset on burial day.
The relationship, however, went through more low times than highs, even before Trump was elected for his first term.
Thus, in February 2016, on the plane back from a trip to Mexico, Francisco regrets that Donald Trump, then a Republican candidate in the US primaries, is a person who “thinks about building walls.” “This is not Christian,” he said.
The pontiff thus answered the journalists’ question of whether a Catholic could vote for someone like Trump. And he added that he did not get involved in advising the vote, but he pointed out: “I just say: this man is not a Christian if he says this.”
On this occasion Trump came out dismissing as “shameful” that a pontiff questions a person’s faith and recalled that the Vatican is surrounded by ‘scandalously high walls’. He later settled the controversy and described the pontiff as a “wonderful guy.”
In January 2017, Francisco congratulates Trump, newly elected president of the United States, and encourages him to maintain “his nation’s commitment to the protection of human dignity and freedom around the world.”
The US president responds that he is “very eager” to meet with Pope Francis, which happened in May of that year, when Trump comes out saying that the meeting has been “an honor.”
In June 2019, on the occasion of the unexpected summit between President Trump and North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, Francis said, without referring to any: “In the last few hours we have witnessed in Korea a good example of the culture of the meeting. I greet the protagonists with prayer and may this significant gesture constitute another step on the path of peace not only in the (Korean) Peninsula but in favor of the whole world.”
On January 19, one day before Trump’s inauguration as US president, Pope Francis, in reference to the plan of mass deportations of immigrants warns: “This, if it is true, will be a disgrace because it will make the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill of the imbalance. That’s not good, that’s not how things are solved.”
The following month in a letter to the bishops of the United States, and in a rare gesture, the pope speaks out against deportations and says: “I urgest all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to the narratives that discriminate and make our migrant brothers and refugees suffer unnecessarily.”
And not to mention Trump, he warned that “what is built on the basis of force, and not from the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and evil will end.”
The White House’s response was that same day by the Catholic Tom Homan, a border security advisor: “I want you to focus – in reference to the pope – on the Catholic Church and fix that and leave border surveillance to us.”
And for history, the last international leader who visited Francis in the Vatican was the US Vice President, JD Vance, on Sunday, the eve of his death.
“I was happy to see him yesterday, although obviously he was very sick. But I will always remember him for the homily he gave in the first days of COVID. It was really beautiful. May God give him rest,” added Vance, a converted Catholic.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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