Just when it seemed the 2016 presidential race could not get any stranger, it took another sharp turn on Thursday as Pope Francis questioned Donald Trump’s Christian faith during a flight home from Mexico.
The pope, responding earlier in the day to a question aboard the papal plane about Trump’s promise to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall, had said: "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.
This is not in the Gospel."
Trump immediately responded: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” he said.
Pope Francis weighed in just hours after he prayed at the Mexico-U.S. border for migrants who died trying to reach the United States.
The pope did not definitively say Trump is not a Christian.
Not having heard Trump's border plans independently, Francis said he'd "give him the benefit of the doubt."
