Tom Homan, the man charged with masterminding President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, has called on Pope Leo XIV to “just stay out” of political matters.
“Look, I’m not gonna speak for the president,” Homan told reporters gathered outside the White House Tuesday. “I’m speaking for myself, a lifelong Catholic. I wish they would stay out of immigration if they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
The Catholic church has a centuries-long tradition in engaging in missions around the world to help the needy and to spread the word of their religion.
“If they wore my shoes for 40 years and talked to a nine-year-old little girl that got raped multiple times, or stood in the back of a trailer, 19 dead aliens at my feet, including a five-year-old boy that baked to death, if they understood the atrocities that happened on open border, I think they, their opinion would change,” Homan continued.
He went on to say that, while he welcomed discussion, “illegal immigration is not a victimless crime,” praising Trump for “saving thousands of lives a year because he has a secure border.”
“Human traffickers are out of business, right?” he said. “The cartels are going bankrupt because of that secure border. I wish that they’d understand that, because if they did, I think they would have a different opinion.”
Later, Homan was interviewed by Rob Schmitt on Newsmax and repeated his objections to the church speaking out.
“It’s unacceptable, and I’ve called the Pope out before,” he told Schmitt. “I’m a lifelong Catholic. Baptized, first communion, confirmation.
“Look, I’ve spent my whole life in the Catholic Church, but I’m disappointed that they want to weigh in on political issues like this. There are enough problems with the Catholic Church – and I know because I’m a member of the Catholic Church – that they need to fix and concentrate on and leave politics alone.
“I mean, they talk about that they don’t believe in a secure border, they need to support open borders. However, if you cross the wall at the Vatican, you’re going to prison, and the penalties are much worse there than they are here.”
He continued: “I wish they would sit down and let me educate them on open borders. When President Trump has illegal immigration down 97 percent, how many women aren’t being raped by the cartels? How many children aren’t dying making that journey? How many pounds of fentanyl aren’t killing Americans? How many women and children aren’t being sex trafficked?
“I wish they would sit down. We want to sit down with them and explain why a secure border is a safer border and a secure border gives us stronger national security.
“I think they’re talking from a position of not knowing what I know, what happens behind the scenes on illegal immigration. I’d be willing to sit down with them. I’m disappointed they’re taking this position.”
The feud between the two camps erupted when the Pope gave a service at St Peter’s Basilica Saturday at which he said prayers for peace serve as “a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive.”
Addressing warmongering leaders, without naming names, he said: “To them we cry out: stop! It is time for peace! Sit at the table of dialogue and mediation – not at the table where rearmament is planned and deadly actions are decided.
“Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life.”
Trump took the comments personally and retaliated by calling the pontiff “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” and then posting a blasphemous meme of himself as Christ, an astonishing episode that risked further offending his own Christian base a week on from his foul-mouthed tirade against Iran on Easter Sunday.
While the Pope himself brushed aside the insult, Vice President JD Vance, a convert to Catholicism, was forced to defend Trump, saying the meme had been “a joke” and, like Homan, urging His Holiness to “stick to matters of morality… and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.”
Italian PM Giorgia Meloni has meanwhile defended the Pope, saying: “Frankly, I would not feel at ease in a society where religious leaders do what political leaders tell them to do.”
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