Vatican City, Sep 11, 2017 / 07:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During a press conference Sunday aboard the papal plane from Colombia to Rome, Pope Francis said that though he is not familiar with how the decision to end DACA was made, he hopes it will be reconsidered as part of a pro-life ethic which defends the unity of families.
“I hope that it will be rethought a little, because I have heard the President of the United States speak as a pro-life man. If he is a good pro-life man, he understands that the family is the cradle of life, and unity must be defended. This is what comes to me,” Francis said Sept. 10.
“I have heard of this law. I have not been able to read the articles, how the decision was made. I don’t know it well,” he stated. “Keeping young people away from the family is not something that brings good fruit.”
Asked if he thought that ending DACA will cause youth who benefitted under the program to lose their joy and hope in the future, he said that when youth feel exploited, whether in this case or others, they are robbed of hope.
Dependency on drugs and other substances, as well as suicide, also provoke hopelessness, he said, which happens when youth are disconnected from their roots.
“Uprooted young people today ask for help, and this is why I insist so much on dialogue between the elderly and the youth. That they talk to their parents, but (also) the elderly,” he said.
The Pope spoke aboard the papal plane Sunday evening on the return flight from Colombia. He made an apostolic visit to the country Sept. 6-11 to promote peace and reconciliation in the country, which has suffered from violence and a decades-long civil war.
In the 40-minute long conference, the Pope also spoke about the crisis in Venezuela, corruption, climate change and whether Colombia could provide a model for the peace process for other countries.
The Trump administration announced Sept. 5 that it would be taking steps to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, commonly known as DACA, which has benefited hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as minors.
Under the program, eligible immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as minors by their parents could receive a two-year stay on their deportation. In that time period, they could be eligible for work permits and Social Security.
The program was announced in 2012 by President Obama and implemented by the Department of Homeland Security, in the memorandum “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children.”
Congress had several times tried and failed to pass the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or a version of it, that would help young immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally before the age of 16 to lawfully remain in the U.S. and even have a path to citizenship.
The most recent version has been introduced this year by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and would grant permanent legal status to more than 1 million eligible persons.
DACA was expanded to include eligible parents who brought their children illegally to the U.S. in a program called “Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents.” In 2016, the Supreme Court upheld a halt on that program going into effect, and U.S. Secretary of State Jeff Sessions warned Tuesday that DACA could get struck down in court.
The Trump administration said it would end DACA by phasing it out. Sessions said that it was an “unconstitutional” overreach of executive power, especially since Congress refused several times to grant such benefits to undocumented immigrants.
However, the decision has been met with harsh criticism, including from U.S. bishops, who said ending the program was a “national tragedy” for all parties and argued that it is unfair to deport young people who did not make the choice to come to the U.S., but who nevertheless have contributed to the country by holding down jobs, going to college and even serving in the nation’s armed forces.
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We’ve transitioned from an Apostolic Church proclaiming Christ and repentance to a sinful world, men and women responsible for evil – to empathetic samaritans treating the wounded. The field hospital analogy. As if sins are really psychic/emotive wounds that a little salvific friendship can heal.
With that approach we transform Christianity into a social services support consortium. Love as revealed by Christ is realized in togetherness. At this stage there’s little difference seen and heard from Church leadership. For example, very little is said about offering self, or assuming the committed approach to faith in Christ of the martyr Churches in Africa.
When a Roman pontiff proclaims during an ordinary address to the Church that All are welcome, people make their own decisions in life – What are we to understand if not those living in ‘irregular unions’, inclusive of homosexual, don’t require repentance or conversion to Apostolic doctrine?
For a concise reading of Pope Leo’s position on Church inclusion and differences in life choices I submit the following:
Speaking with Crux Senior Correspondent Elise Ann Allen for her new biography Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the 21st Century [Penguin Peru], the pope said his approach mirrors that of Pope Francis: an open door rooted in dignity and respect for all, but without doctrinal revision.
“What I’m trying to say is what Francis said very clearly when he would say, todos, todos, todos,” Pope Leo explained. “Everyone’s invited in, but I don’t invite a person in because they are or are not of any specific identity. I invite a person in because they are a son or daughter of God.” “It’s very important to understand how to accept others who are different than we are, how to accept people who make choices in their life and to respect them” (Kasmir Nema, RVA News September 22, 2025).
Oh dear, the sidestepped difference between a choice/decision and a moral judgment…
“A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [a choice and no longer a ‘moral judgment’?] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience [?] is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not…]” (Veritatis Splendor, papal encyclical of 1993, n. 56).
Accepting and respecting individual people as persons is one thing, but another is endorsing a sociological “identity” committed to the gay lifestyle, as is the lack of charity by withholding conceptual and moral clarity. Also, the broader problem of–anyone–sacrilegiously receiving of the sacrificial Eucharist. Christ wept at Gethsemani.
This non-amnesiac comment is offered in the spirit of Pope Francis’ lay/ecclesial synodal dialogue.
They are wise and compassionate. Society needs Good Samaritans.