Megyn Kelly criticized Pope Francis over his stance on immigration just hours after the Vatican announced the pontiff’s death on Monday.
Kelly, the former Fox News host and a practicing Catholic, unleashed a sharp critique of the Pope Francis’ leadership and political stance, particularly on immigration.
Francis, 88, died early Monday from a cerebral stroke and heart failure.
By the afternoon, Kelly had released a new episode of her SiriusXM podcast “The Megyn Kelly Show” where she accused the pope of moving the Catholic Church “in a leftward direction.”
Kelly criticized the Church’s efforts to assist undocumented immigrants, suggesting those efforts left American citizens to “deal” with the consequences.
“The Church has been participating in getting immigrants here and then finding them housing and helping them stay here, irrespective of the fact that they’re here illegally,” Kelly said.
“And Pope Francis didn’t have to deal with that. It’s caused a lot of us in the Catholic Church to wonder what exactly we’re donating toward on Sunday, it really does.”
She said conservative Catholics like herself have found themselves in a “tug-of-war… between the Pope’s messaging and what he wanted us to believe were deep Catholic teachings and what we understand as Americans who have been watching our citizens murdered in the streets by these people to be true.”
According to Kelly, “funding illegals coming into the country” is a step too far.
“They’re not all upstanding Catholics,” she added, contrasting the Church’s traditional missions with what she perceives as political overreach.
During his papacy, Pope Francis frequently denounced President Trump’s policies, particularly the planned construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border.
He condemned such moves as acts of “cruelty” and labeled the deportation of migrants a “grave sin.”
In the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election, the pontiff encouraged Catholics to vote according to their conscience and choose “the lesser evil.”
In response to these positions, Vice President JD Vance invoked the medieval Catholic concept of ordo amoris — a supposed hierarchy of care that begins with one’s family and extends outward.
But Francis addressed this interpretation in a February letter to American bishops, pushing back against that reading of the theology.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups,” Francis wrote.
“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the Good Samaritan… the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
Despite the theological disagreement, Vance met briefly with the Pope one day before his death in what some viewed as an attempt to reconcile their differences.
Kelly, however, remained firmly on Trump’s side in the immigration debate.
“Trump was so devoted to getting rid of these people who Pope Francis just looked at as vulnerable and defenseless,” she said.
“You know who is vulnerable and defenseless? Laken Riley,” she added, referencing a Georgia nursing student allegedly killed by undocumented migrants.
Though highly critical, Kelly ended her remarks with a note of reflection.
“I’m sure he would’ve had nothing but empathy for those killed by these illegals,” she said, while expressing hope that the next pope might be New York’s Archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, 77, has assumed temporary control of Vatican affairs as camerlengo — a role that oversees the Church’s day-to-day operations and coordinates the transition to the next papacy.
Francis, diverging from tradition, requested burial in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore rather than St. Peter’s Basilica, and will be the first pope in over a century to be buried outside the Vatican.
