Pope Francis on Tuesday harshly criticized President Trump’s policy of mass deportations and urged Catholics to reject anti-immigrant narratives in an unusually direct attack on the American administration.
In an open letter to American bishops, Francis said that deporting people who often come from difficult situations violates the “dignity of many men and women, and of entire families.”
The pope wrote that he had “followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” adding that any policy built on force “begins badly and will end badly.”
Francis has long been an advocate for migrants, and has made denouncing their plight a pillar of his papacy. He has called the issue a “shipwreck of civilization” and spoken out repeatedly against what he considers unwelcoming and unchristian migration policies around the world.
Pope Francis had criticized Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration plans when he was a presidential candidate, but the letter was one of the first public and explicit criticisms he has directed at the United States’ president since the election. Experts said it amounted to a steep escalation in the temper of the relationship between the Vatican and the American administration.
“It turns up the heat of the conflict,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology at Villanova University.
Experts said that by writing an open letter, the pope was also indirectly addressing members of the new American administration, many of whom are Catholic, and specifically, Vice President JD Vance.
Francis appeared to give a riposte to Mr. Vance, who recently talked about the “ordo amoris” — a medieval Catholic theological concept that established a hierarchy of duties that prioritized immediate obligations to one’s family or community over distant needs.
The pope wrote that “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.” “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted,” he wrote, is “love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
The pope’s letter, experts said, was also addressed to some bishops and Catholics who have adopted a benevolent stance toward President Trump.
“He wants to avoid that the Church is divided into a Church of the Pope and a Church of Trump,” said Alberto Melloni, a church historian and the director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna.
Pope Francis has spoken out before against Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration policies.
In 2016, he suggested that Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, “is not Christian” because of his campaign promises to deport more immigrants and build a wall along the Mexico border.
Last year, Pope Francis said that both presidential candidates were “against life” — Kamala Harris for her support for abortion rights, and President Trump for closing the door to immigrants. He urged voters to choose the “lesser of two evils.”
But during President Trump’s first term, Francis directed general criticism at the building of walls, but generally refrained from direct attacks on the administration.
This time, Francis has not been shy to criticize President Trump’s policies more directly. On an Italian TV show on the eve of the inauguration, he said that Mr. Trump’s deportation plans, “if true, will be a disgrace.”
During President Trump’s first term, “the Vatican thought Trump was a historical mistake that would be corrected,” Mr. Faggioli said. “Now they know it’s a new era.”
There was no immediate comment from the White House.
In the letter, which was unannounced, Francis urged Catholics to consider human values, not laws or regulations, as the primary compass driving their actions.
“Consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights,” he wrote. “Not vice versa.”
He reminded Catholics that Jesus and his family were migrants to Egypt, and exhorted “all the faithful of the Catholic Church” not to “give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”
Other Christian leaders have also criticized President Trump.
During the inaugural prayer service at Washington National Cathedral last month, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, the leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, asked President Trump to have mercy on undocumented immigrants, L.G.B.T.Q. children, and others.
The following day, Mr. Trump demanded an apology from the “so-called Bishop” and “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” on his social media platform Truth Social.
