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US presidential hopeful Donald Trump has said he would scare Pope Francis about an ISIS threat if the Pontiff told him about capitalism’s faults.
Multi-billionaire Mr Trump, who is one of the contenders to be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, said this during an interview on CNN last week.
Presenter Chris Cuomo presented a hypothetical scenario where the Pope and Mr Trump were meeting face-to-face.
If the Pope, in such a scenario, expressed a belief that capitalism can be “a real avenue to greed, it can be really toxic and corrupt”, how would Mr Trump respond?
“I’d say ISIS wants to get you,” Mr Trump said.
“You know that ISIS wants to go in and take over the Vatican? You have heard that. You know, that’s a dream of theirs, to go into Italy.”
“He talks to you about capitalism, you scare the Pope?” Cuomo asked.
“I’m gonna have to scare the Pope because it’s the only thing,” Mr Trump said.
“The Pope, I hope, can only be scared by God. But the truth is — you know, if you look at what’s going on — they better hope that capitalism works, because it’s the only thing we have right now. And it’s a great thing when it works properly.”
Mr Trump said right now, capitalism was not working properly in the US because of over-regulation of industry.
The real estate mogul said that though he is a Protestant, he generally likes Pope Francis.
“I have great respect for the Pope,” Mr Trump said.
“I like the Pope. I actually like him. He’s becoming very political, there’s no question about it. But I like him. He seems like a pretty good guy.”
Mr Trump also noted he doesn’t believe the Pope is actually opposed to capitalism.
During his recent visit to South America, Pope Francis described unregulated capitalism as “the dung of the Devil”.
But he has reportedly been told by his advisers to tone down his criticism to appeal to American audiences when he visits New York and Philadelphia next month.
Sources
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News category: World.
