Pope Francis did not mention Donald Trump, but as the new U.S “President” was being sworn in, the Pope made some interesting statement to a Spanish newspaper, El Paris. Pope Francis warned that “crises provoke fears and worries,” among people, and added that Germans “elected” Adolf Hitler to lead and fix Germany because he was the one telling them, “I can do it.”
In an hour-long interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais conducted as Donald Trump was being sworn in as US president, the pontiff also condemned the idea of using walls and barbed wire to keep out foreigners, among them refugees and migrants. “Of course crises provoke fears and worries,” he said, but added that for him “the example of populism in the European sense of the word is Germany in 1933”.
The pope added: “Germany … was looking for a leader, someone who would give her back her identity and there was a little man named Adolf Hitler who said ‘I can do it’.” “Hitler did not steal power,” the pope said. “He was elected by his people and then he destroyed his people.” The Germans at that time also wanted to protect themselves with “walls and barbed wire so that others cannot take away their identity”, he said.
“The case of Germany is classic,” he said, adding that Hitler gave them a “deformed identity and we know what it produced.”
