When Pope Francis said Friday that U.S. voters must choose between the "lesser of two evils," he didn't outwardly make a judgment between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, but said their rejection of immigrants and support of abortion rights, respectively, equally weighted down both.
But put in context, the statement represented a bigger swipe at Trump, argued Nayyera Haq, former President Barack Obama's senior director of cabinet affairs, in a panel on CNN.
It is rare for the pope to discuss American politics, although he has taken veiled shots at Trump in the past, saying in 2016 that "a person who only thinks about building walls and not bridges is not Christian," and earlier this year calling the panic against migrants at the U.S. border "madness."
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"This pope has thumbed his nose in somewhat diplomatic ways at Donald Trump before," Haq told her colleagues.
For example, she brought up "the encyclical he gave him when Trump came to visit [that] was entirely about environmental stewardship and climate change, right? The idea that we need to be protecting the earth, this to somebody who was effectively has been a climate denier."
Additionally, she noted, "he's also been rather generous, given the churches history, when it comes to tolerance of gay and lesbian individuals as well."
"So in that sense, the Catholics who wished for a more conservative Catholic pope may not be swayed by this, but he certainly does speak to that broader sense of Christianity, social justice, and I think just faith-based social justice that the least among us, taking care of those, that is an immediate reference to refugees and immigrants," said Haq.
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