Pope Francis stated on Friday that voters will need to choose between the "lesser of two evils" in the U.S. presidential election between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, according to CNN. “One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know,” said Francis while speaking to reporters on the papal plane. “Everyone with a conscience should think on this and do it.” Specifically, in Francis' view, Harris' stance in favor of abortion and Trump's stance against immigrants are equally problematic to him. It is highly rare for the pontiff to weigh in on U.S. politics, although he emphasized he did not make this statement as an endorsement of either candidate. “To send migrants away, to leave them wherever you want, to leave them … it’s something terrible, there is evil there. To send away a child from the womb of the mother is an assassination, because there is life. We must speak about these things clearly,” Francis added. While Francis has maintained the Catholic Church's hardline stance against abortion, he has also sought to liberalize some of the church's views, including authorizing blessings for same-sex marriages and allowing priests to absolve abortions when congregants seek forgiveness. He has also intervened when hard-right U.S. bishops become too political, firing Texas-based bishop Joseph Strickland over insubordination, and, some observers speculate, because he was involved in former President Donald Trump's Stop the Steal protests after the 2020 election. Over the years since his ascendancy to the head of the Vatican, some Republicans have expressed disgust for Francis' more liberal direction, with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly even trying to "persuade" him immigrants are bad by citing cases of immigrant crime.

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