Pope Francis has said that Donald Trump’s plans to deport illegal migrants from the US would be a “disgrace” if they materialised.

Speaking to an Italian TV programme from his Vatican residence, Francis said that if the plans went ahead, Trump would make “poor wretches that don’t have anything foot the bill”.

“That’s not right. That’s not how you solve problems,” he said.

Trump has promised to begin the largest expulsion of undocumented immigrants in US history soon after he takes office.

In a message to Trump shared on Monday, Pope Francis offered him “cordial greetings” and urged him to lead a society with “no room for hatred, discrimination or exclusion” and promote “peace and reconciliation among peoples”.

The Pope is known to hold the issue of migrants dear. During a public audience last August, he said that “systematically working by all means to drive away migrants” was “a grave sin”.

In 2016, before the first presidential election won by Trump, Pope Francis said “a person who thinks only about building walls… and not of building bridges, is not Christian”.

Referring to Trump’s promise to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep migrants from travelling into the US, Francis said: “I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and I will give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Francis and Trump later met when Trump and his family visited Rome in 2017.

Before the US presidential election in 2024, the Pope declined to say whether people should vote for Trump or for his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, merely urging people to choose “the lesser evil” according to their conscience.

During the interview on Sunday evening, Francis also touched on the issue of migration to Europe, saying there was “a lot of cruelty” and that everyone had “the right to remain home and the right to emigrate”.

The Pope also added that some of the southern European countries that receive the most migrant arrivals “are not having any children and need manpower”.

“In some of these countries, there are entire villages that are empty. A good, well-thought out migrant policy would help countries like Italy and Spain too,” he said.

In another section of the interview, Francis was asked about the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and said he did not know why making peace was so difficult.

“I don’t know why… it’s as if there was an international drive towards self-destruction,” the Pope said.

Francis, 88, has been in the post since 2013, when he was elected to succeed Pope Benedict XVI.