Francis took the remarkable step of addressing the U.S. migrant crackdown in a letter to U.S. bishops in which he appeared to take direct aim at Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the deportation program on theological grounds.

History’s first Latin American pope has long made caring for migrants a priority of his pontificate, demanding that countries welcome, protect, promote and integrate those fleeing conflicts, poverty and climate disasters. Francis has also said governments are expected to do so to the limits of their capacity.

The Argentine Jesuit and President Donald Trump have long sparred over migration, including before Trump’s first administration when Francis famously said anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants was “not a Christian.”

In the letter, Francis said nations have the right to defend themselves and keep their communities safe from criminals.

“That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” he wrote.

Citing the biblical stories of migration, the Book of Exodus and Jesus Christ’s own experience, Francis affirmed the right of people to seek shelter and safety in other lands and said he was following the “major crisis” unfolding in the U.S. with the deportation plan.

He said anyone schooled in Christianity “cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”

“What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly,” he wrote.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week that more than 8,000 people had been arrested in immigration enforcement actions since Trump took office Jan. 20. Some have been deported, others are being held in federal prisons and still others are being held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Vance, a Catholic convert, has defended the administration’s America-first crackdown by citing a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as “ordo amoris.” He has said the concept delineates a hierarchy of care — to family first, followed by neighbor, community, fellow citizens and lastly those elsewhere.

In his letter, Francis appeared to correct Vance’s understanding of the concept.

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” he wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

David Gibson, director of the center for religion and culture at Fordham University, said in a social media post that Francis’ letter “takes aim at every single absurd theological claim by JD Vance and his allies in conservative Catholicism (and the Catholic electorate).”

“This is the pope also directly countering misinformation about the Catholic faith that is being expounded by the Catholic vice president,” he added to The Associated Press. “And it is the pope supporting the bishops as well.”

Vance’s reference to the ordo amoris had won support from many on the Catholic right in the U.S., including the Catholic League, which said he was right about the hierarchy of Christian love.

Writing in Crisis Magazine, editor Eric Sammons said Vance was merely drawing on the wisdom of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and the broader teaching of the Church to insist on loving things in an order.

“For Augustine, every love, even the love of neighbor, must be ordered beneath the love of God,” he wrote. “This hierarchy extends to our human relationships where love for family, community, and nation should precede our love for the world at large, not in intensity but in priority of duty and responsibility.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had already put out an unusually critical statement after Trump’s initial executive orders. It said those “focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty, and the environment, are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us.”

It was a strong rebuke from the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, which considers abortion to be the “preeminent priority” for Catholic voters and had cheered the 2022 Supreme Court decision to end constitutional protections for abortion that was made possible by Trump-appointed justices. Trump won 54% of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, a wider margin than the 50% in the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden, a Catholic.

The Trump-Francis collision course on migration dates to the 2016 presidential campaign, when Francis traveled to the U.S. Mexico border and said anyone who builds a wall rather than a bridge to keep out migrants was “not a Christian.” He made the comment after celebrating Mass at the border.

But migration is not the only area of conflict in U.S.-Vatican relations.

On Monday, the Vatican’s main charity Caritas International warned that millions of people could die as a result of the “ruthless” U.S. decision to “recklessly” stop USAID funding. Caritas asked governments to urgently call on the Trump administration to reverse course.

It’s not unusual for a pope to address a country’s bishops or faithful to deliver a specific message. Francis wrote to German Catholics in 2019 to express concern about the German church’s reform process. He wrote to the faithful of the Middle East and in Ukraine last year to express his solidarity in a time of war. Pope Benedict XVI wrote to the Irish faithful in 2010 following the devastating revelations of the country’s clergy sexual abuse crisis.

But it’s rare for a pope to weigh in on a specific political program of a country with such a letter, although migration is certainly an issue that the U.S. Catholic Church has long had at the forefront of its agenda.