The Pope vs Trump: The ‘Holy See’ wrestles ‘Holy Me’ over Gaza exile plan

Alameen Templeton
King Donald Trump (KDT) has found himself facing a new enemy, who is opposing his ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza and his racist immigration policy, and this guy has even more followers that the American king – Pope Francis.
The Vatican seems to have raised itself from its slumber, still waiting for the results of a probe it launched a few months ago asking if genocide is being committed in Gaza, and issued a sharp rebuttal last week to KDT’s plan to “own” Gaza and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their land.
“Whoever was born and has lived in Gaza must remain on their land,” the Pope’s foreign minister , Cardinal Pietro Parolin, declared at an event in Rome late last week, according to the Vatican’s official news outlet.
The Pope’s red line
Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, said Palestinians must be allowed to remain on their land. “No deportations, and this is one of the fundamental points,” he said.
He also reiterated the Vatican’s long-standing call for a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Arab world has voiced outrage, and European powers deep concern, over Trump’s proposal that Palestinians should be forced out of Gaza permanently so it can be turned into as a waterfront resort property under US control.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has warned the plan poses a major threat to world peace.
Parolin issued the blunt rebuke just two days after the Pope tangled head-on with King Donald over his plans to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep out immigrants fleeing poverty and war in their own countries.
The Argentinian-born pontiff has described King Donald’s determination to clamp down on immigrants seeking a better life in the US with harsh arrests, detentions without real judicial oversight and to build a wall to keep out the flood, as a crisis.
The West’s mainstream media have climbed all over the immigration issue, flooding their pages with outrage about immigration while trying to plaster over or ignore the Gaza fallout.
Pope’s roots are showing
Parolin made his comments on the sidelines of a diplomatic event at the Italian embassy. Francis made his statement on immigration in a letter to his bishops in the US.
It’s the second time the pontiff has clashed heads with Donald on immigration. Coming from South America, he knows the whole of that continent is watching him closely on the issue and he seems to be responding to the call of his roots.
The pope, who last month called Trump’s plan to deport millions of migrants a “disgrace”, said it was wrong to assume that all undocumented immigrants were criminals as Trump has branded them repeatedly during his presidential campaign and again after taking office.
“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,” Francis said in an open letter.
Donald’s pledge to deport migrants en masse was a “major crisis”, Francis said the letter, adding it was important for Catholics to reject any measure that equated illegal status with criminality.
Deporting people — who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, exploitation and persecution — “damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness”, Francis said.
Swimming against the tide
Associated Press reports “History’s first Latin American pope has long made caring for migrants a priority of his pontificate, citing the biblical command to ‘welcome the stranger’ in demanding that countries welcome, protect, promote and integrate those fleeing conflicts and poverty … Francis has also said governments are expected to do so to the limits of their capacity.”
Clearly, that message is facing trouble filtering down to his flock, with EU states and the US firmly in the grip of right-wing movements riding a tide instigated resentment and racist outrage that their wars have created millions of refugees over the last two decades who are now swamping their borders.
US border czar Tom Homan immediately pushed back, noting that the Vatican is a city-state surrounded by walls and that Francis should leave border enforcement to his office and “stick to the Catholic Church”.
This is the second iteration of Pope vs Trump; Francis in 2016 famously declared anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants was “not a Christian.” 
Francis, however, later said he wasn’t referring to King Donald directly.
Google AI says about 72million adults in the US, or 21% of the population, identified as Catholic. That compares to an estimated 3.45million Muslims in the country.
Islam ‘booming’
The Population Reference Bureau says about 25% of adults in the US have left their childhood faith to join another. 
“While some world religions such as Islam and Hinduism have experienced a boom in the United States in recent years, Catholicism has been hit the hardest by a significant drop in membership over the life course,” it says.
Nevertheless, Catholics constitute the biggest religious group in the US, it claims.
Asked by reporters at the White House last Tuesday if the U.S. would force the exodus of Palestinians, Trump said, “You’re going to see that they’re all going to want to leave,” according to The Associated Press. He claimed in an interview with Fox News the same day that Palestinians would not want to return “because they’re going to have much better housing” somewhere else.
According to Vatican News, Parolin told reporters that “neighboring countries are not willing (to take in refugees); we heard for example the king of Jordan recently who absolutely said ‘no.'”
An unnamed Italian official had noted that any mass deportation “would create tension in the area,” the cardinal added.
“We have to find a solution, and the solution in our opinion is a two-state solution because this also means giving hope to the people,” he said.
Ignorant King Donald
UN Commission of Inquiry chair Navi Pilay said “Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing,” in a talk with Politico.
Egypt is planning to propose a counter to Trump’s plan focused on rebuilding Gaza while keeping the Palestinians in their land, emphasizing that “Any solution to the Palestinian cause must take into account avoiding jeopardizing peace gains in the region,” in a statement by the Foreign Ministry.