Here’s a news story that took off in a hurry!
I haven’t read all the posts yet, but I just want to point out that I doubt Pope Francis’ intent was to single out Trump as a non-Christian. If you look at some of the homilies, addresses, speeches, etc. that Pope Francis gives, he very frequently calls out specific behavior as being “not Christian.” I did a site search of news.va for “pope francis” and “not Christian” and came upon a number of statements from the pope:
- Fearful and joyless communities are not Christian
- We do not advertise Jesus Christ, to have more 'members’ in our ‘spiritual society’, no? This is not necessary. There’s no need; it’s not Christian.
- Our Christian identity is belonging to a people: the Church . Without this, we are not Christians.
- Saint Paul exhorts us not to judge and not to despise our brothers, because this leads to excluding them from “our little group,” to being selective, and this is not Christian.
- A Christian without joy is not Christian
- A disciple of Jesus who does not serve others is not Christian
- Without the Cross, the Christian style is not Christian
And that’s just the first page of hits.
I don’t think Francis’ point is to excommunicate people but rather to get people to reflect on how better to act like Christians.