Pope Francis took aim at Vice President JD Vance for invoking the Catholic theological concept of “ordo amoris” to justify the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, using the “true” meaning of the idea to call on US bishops to resist “mass deportations.

Francis took the remarkable step of addressing the U.S. migrant crackdown in a letter to U.S. bishops in which he appeared to take direct aim at Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the deportation program on theological grounds.

In the letter, the pope said the criminalization of migrants and the mass deportations planned by the U.S. government are dangerous and called the country's current immigration policies a “major crisis.