'We must wait and see,' pope says of President Trump

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — As President Donald Trump was being
sworn in, Pope Francis told an interviewer it would be “reckless” to
pass judgment on the new president before he had a chance to do anything.

“We must wait and see,” the pope told two
reporters from the Spanish newspaper El Pais during a 75-minute interview Jan.
19.

The interview was published late Jan. 20 in its original
Spanish with an English translation.

Asked if he wasn’t worried at least about some of the things
Trump said before his election, the pope responded, “I’m waiting. God
waited so long for me, with all my sins.”

“Being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of
something that might happen is, in my view, quite reckless,” the pope
said. “We will see. We will see what he does and then we will judge — always
on the concrete. Christianity either is concrete or it is not Christianity.”

El Pais asked another question about Trump and populists in
the United States and Europe who, the interviewer said, “capitalize on
fear in the face of an uncertain future in order to form a message full of
xenophobia and hatred toward the foreigner.”

“Crises provoke fear, alarm,” the pope said.
“In my opinion, the most obvious example of European populism is Germany
in 1933. After (Paul von) Hindenburg, after the crisis of 1930, Germany is
broken, it needs to get up, to find its identity, a leader, someone capable of
restoring its character, and there is a young man named Adolf Hitler who says:
‘I can, I can.'”

“Hitler didn’t steal the power, his people voted for
him, and then he destroyed his people,” Pope Francis said.

In times of crisis, he said, large segments of the
population think, “Let’s look for a savior who gives us back our identity
and let’s defend ourselves with walls, barbed-wire, whatever, from other
peoples who may rob us of our identity. And that is a very serious thing.”

Obviously, Pope Francis said, nations have a right and duty
to control their borders, especially under the threat of terrorism, but “no
country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility of talking with
their neighbors.”

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