Christopher Kerr is executive director of the Ignatian Solidarity Network (ISN), a national lay-led social justice education and advocacy organization grounded in the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. ISN has invited the Ignatian network and partners to lift up Pope Francis’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border through education, advocacy, and prayer through their #Pope2Border campaign.
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Pope Francis: Responding in Both Word and Deed
You probably saw the media frenzy around Pope Francis’s comments aboard the papal plane on his trip back to Rome from Mexico last week. When asked about presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.- Mexico border, the pope said, “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
However, I was struck most by the pope’s following remarks, which were omitted from several mainstream media accounts — when he said of Trump’s plans, “This is not in the Gospel.”
The Power of Encounter
Pope Francis at a general audience, April, 30, 2014. softdelusion66 / Shutterstock.com
Do you remember the video clips of 5-year-old Sophie Cruz dashing across Constitution Avenue to Pope Francis’s popemobile during his visit to Washington, D.C., last September? The story of that encounter went viral: a young child with undocumented parents from Mexico who was granted permission to approach the pope, give him a letter, and receive a hug.
At the time, many seemed surprised by encounters like these during the pope’s U.S. trip — particularly that he would choose to make personal contact with the realities faced by marginalized populations. But this encounter-centered approach has been Francis’ way of operating since the outset of his pontificate.