Pope to us: Build bridges, not walls

JUST as in the Holy Father’s urbi et orbi (to the city and to the world) messages, Pope Francis may well have been talking to and about the world when he said last Thursday that “a person who thinks only about building walls… and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

That remark reverberated throughout the world. It added spice to the debate in the US presidential election campaign where leading Republican aspirant Donald Trump had talked about building a 2,500-kilometer wall at the US-Mexico border to block illegal crossings.

What exactly did the Pope say? Here is an excerpt from the hour-long interview of Pope Francis last Feb. 18 with the media flying with him from Ciudad Juarez to Rome at the conclusion of his visit to Mexico:

Phil Pullella, Reuters: “Today, you spoke very eloquently about the problems of immigration. On the other side of the border, there is a very tough electoral battle. One of the candidates for the White House, Republican Donald Trump, in an interview recently said that you are a political man and he even said that you are a pawn, an instrument of the Mexican government for migration politics. Trump said that if he’s elected, he wants to build 2,500 kilometers of wall along the border. He wants to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, separating families, etcetera. I would like to ask you, what do you think of these accusations against you and if a North American Catholic can vote for a person like this?”

Pope Francis: “Thank God he said I was a politician because Aristotle defined the human person as ‘animal politicus.’ At least I am a human person. As to whether I am a pawn, well, maybe, I don’t know. I’ll leave that up to your judgment and that of the people. And then, a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel. As far as what you said about whether I would advise to vote or not to vote, I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.”

The outspoken Trump fired back, calling the Pope’s comments “disgraceful.” He said: “No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith.”

But Trump was smart enough not to tangle with the Pontiff while courting the votes of the Hispanics (mostly Mexicans) that as of 2012 comprised 17.2 percent of the total US population, 11.2 percent of adult citizens, and 8.9 percent of actual voters.

Back in the Philippines, Mayor Rody Duterte, a leading candidate for president, also learned early in the campaign that it does not pay to talk disparagingly of the Pope even when one loses his temper in a monstrous traffic jam during a papal visit.

Trump must have been advised that 83 percent of Americans call themselves Christians and 22 percent Catholic. Before the sun set that day in South Carolina, where he joined a town hall debate, he had softened his statements about the leader of the Catholic Church.

“I don’t like fighting with the Pope,” Trump said. “I like his personality, I like what he represents.” Without winking, he granted that the Pontiff may have been misled by his Mexican hosts.

• Walls are mostly meant to bar ‘outsiders’

STILL, Trump could not help remarking that the Pope himself has an “awfully big wall” at the Vatican.

That shot is off the mark, of course, since the walls in the 44-hectare city-state are not meant to keep away aliens in the same sense that Trump wants an $8-billion wall stretching along the US border with Mexico of four states from California to Texas.

As many Catholics have pointed out, visitors are free to go in and out of the Vatican. The capacious square of St. Peter’s Basilica is one big open door.

In a visit to the Vatican in 1982 with my eldest daughter Maria Leonila, I remember us two pilgrims roaming around freely, mostly following the crowd and snapping pictures now and then.

Suddenly we found ourselves inside St. Peter’s, standing near the aisle just three meters from then Pope John Paul II (now St. John Paul the Great) blessing the faithful as he ambled toward the altar. There was no “awfully big wall” then, as now, and for always.

Walls are built for a variety of reasons, mostly to delineate boundaries and to keep away “outsiders.” A modern euphemism for this exclusionary motive is “border control.”

Historical samples of such barriers are the Great Wall of China and the former Berlin Wall in Germany. Less physical manifestations of divisive walls, but just as abhorrent, are prejudice and racial discrimination.

Here lies, I think, the deeper meaning of Pope Francis’ remark that “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian” – especially as it applies to those who presume to wield power and control people’s lives.

To localize this point, we reiterate the admonition that a national leader’s first task after winning a bruising election is to set aside animosities, embrace everybody, bind the nation’s wounds and unite the people. A one-term President should drop party labels and color-coding.

Building social bridges, not partisan walls, is crucial to a unifying President’s infrastructure program.

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