Trump's moves agst Christian values-Sosa (3)

(ANSA) - Rome, March 8 - US President Donald Trump's planned wall with Mexico and his travel ban on six Muslim countries are "against the values of the Americans and the values of the Christians," recently elected Jesuit chief Arturo Sosa told ANSA in an exclusive interview Wednesday. Trump's proposal to separate children from their illegal immigrant mothers, he added, "is against the roots of American society, and let's say humanity". Father Sosa, elected the Jesuits' 31st Superior General in October, added: "It seems to me that President Trump is trying on the one hand to profit from these fears and uncertainty and afterwards it seems to me that it is a non-recognition of the history of the United States and the current situation of the United States". Sosa, whose order includes Pope Francis, said: "Mexico, if we try to measure what is the contribution of Mexicans, of Mexican workers, of Mexican farm hands, to the economy of the United States, I think it should be the opposite, we should open the wall and be grateful, we should thank a society which is capable of sharing this, improving other people's lives". As for separating children from their mothers, Sosa recalled that "we used to criticise the Soviet Union for doing that, and now we want to repeat it?".
    Sosa went on to say that the policy of walls against migrants in Europe and elsewhere is "inhumane and useless". "This has been shown in...the situation of these people coming to seek asylum, who arrive at frontiers on foot, or cross the Mediterranean, and who risk their lives, many of them losing their lives: we don't know how many thousands are at the bottom of the Mediterranean. "So walls are inhumane. Then, the intention of closing is useless, because there are so many holes in any wall you put up.
    You only create a tenser situation." Sosa added: "you create more problems and crises". He said "fear is a sensation that is very closely linked to insecurity and ignorance. And fear among human beings ends when I really encounter another person, when I get to know him, when I see his face, when I see he is a person like me..who needs my help".
    Sosa went on to say that "trying to identify Islam with terrorism is madness. "Because there are millions of Muslims of good faith and people of great humanity who are Muslims. And there are terrorists of Muslim religion, atheists, and even Christians.
    "And so to try to make this identification between a religion or a race and terrorism seems to me really a manipulation of such a complex phenomenon as terrorism at this time in the world. And in this way you don't find a way of combatting it effectively".
    Finally, Sosa hailed moves to achieve global gender parity, on International Women's Day, which fell on Wednesday. "When you make any study on poverty, it always highlights how poverty hits women and children more than the rest of the population," he said. "So it seems to me that if we really want to try to reconcile humanity with justice, the first thing is to have special care for women. "Women at all levels: young, old, mothers, not mothers". Explaining his participation in the Vatican Women's Day event, Voices of Faith, dedicated to female voices in humanitarian and peace fields, Sosa said gender parity was an "essential point in humanity".