Pope jabs Vance, criticizes Trump admin for mass deportations

Driving the news: Pope Francis wrote in the letter that he has been following the "major crisis" in the U.S. concerning the mass deportations program.

• While the pope acknowledged countries have the right to defend themselves and keep their communities safe, he urged all his followers "not to give in to narratives that discriminate" against migrants and refugees.
• "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.
• The pope also drew a distinction between legal regulation of immigration and wholesale deportation. "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.

The big picture: The Trump administration has already taken a number of steps to curb immigration.

• These include reinstating the "Remain in Mexico" policy for asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, aiming to end "birthright citizenship" for children born to undocumented immigrants, and allowing federal officials to arrest undocumented immigrants in "sensitive" spaces, like churches.

Zoom in: Vance recently defended the administration's actions by invoking on X the Catholic theological concept of "ordo amoris."

• Translated from Latin, "ordo amoris" means "order of love" or "order of charity," AP reported.
• Vance argued that the concept denotes a hierarchy of obligation — that one's responsibility to one's family is greater than the obligation to a "stranger who lives thousands of miles away."
• "You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world," Vance posted, per AP.
• Other Catholic figures, like Jesuit priest James Martin, pushed back on Vance's interpretation. "Jesus's fundamental message is that *everyone* is your neighbor," Martin wrote on X last month.

Pope Francis weighed in on the concept in his Tuesday letter.

• "Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups," Francis wrote.
• "The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating ... on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception," he added.
• A spokesperson for the Vice President did not immediately respond Tuesday to Axios' request for comment on the Pope's letter.

Trump's "border czar" Tom Homan hit back at the pope Tuesday, telling reporters that Francis "ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work and leave border enforcement to us," The Hill reported.

Zoom out: It's not the the first time Christian groups have rebuked the administration over its immigration policies.

• A group of Quaker congregations filed a lawsuit against the administration in January over its policy to allow arrests at houses of worship and other sensitive spaces.
• After Trump first took office, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde implored him to "have mercy" for undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ+ people.

Go deeper: Trump's immigration orders rebuked by Christian leaders