By Megan Specia
After Pope Francis and Donald Trump's war of words Thursday, that saw the pontiff call the GOP contender's Christianity into question over his insistence of a wall on the Mexican border, Trump scurried to point out the Vatican's own walls.
Trump, and supporters cited Vatican City's looming walls as a sign of the Catholic church's exclusionary practices.
The only problem with Trump's comeback is that its premise is entirely wrong. Unlike his own plans to seal off the Mexican border, people can come and go freely into Vatican City.
That point was one that CNN's Anderson Cooper was quick to make when Trump tried to use the Vatican walls, created hundreds of years before his birth, as a way to slam the Pope.
"He also talked about having a wall is not Christian," said Trump, seen in the clip below. "And he’s got an awfully big wall at the Vatican."
He was not the only one to try to use the Vatican walls to push his border policies. A Trump campaign staffer, Dan Scavino, was among the first in his corner of the ring to claim that "Vatican City is 100% surrounded by massive walls," and shared a satellite image of exactly where he thought these walls were.
Conservative commentator Joe Scarborough also tweeted an image of the walls with the message "Pope Francis, tear down that wall!" which Trump himself retweeted.
Yes, the Vatican does have medieval fortification walls surrounding portions of the city. But the front of St. Peter's Square is actually wide open for anyone to come and go as they please. Unlike most sovereign nations, you don't even have to have your passport checked when you enter the city-state.
Gerard Mannion, a professor of Catholic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, told the New York Times that was exactly the point of the Vatican's design.
“Anybody can walk into St. Peter’s Square — that’s the whole point of it,” said Mannion. “It was designed to be welcoming and to draw people in like two open arms, to draw them into the heart of the church.”
CREDIT: MASHABLE
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