Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., tells
Newsmax TV he opposes a moratorium on Muslim immigration as GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump has proposed.
"What we are capable as a country of doing is both being careful and compassionate," Wuerl said Tuesday on "Newsmax Prime."We're the most significant country on the planet. The resources we have, the capabilities we have, there's no reason why we cannot being compassionate in receiving people and careful in filtering those who are coming in so that we don't find ourselves in some dramatic situation down the road."
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People have been in the pipeline to enter the United States for some time, he said, including Christians and other minorities being driven out of Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State (ISIS.)
"It doesn't make sense to say we're going to stop all of this simply because we are concerned that in that mix, there might be some bad people," Wuerl said.
The archbishop said he isn't aware of any attempt by Pope Francis to secure the release of Iranian American pastor Saeed Abedini from an Iranian prison, but added that it is best any such talks be kept out of public knowledge anyway.
"The success of any type of intervention rests on the confidentiality of it, lest it become politicized and lest people whom the Holy Father is trying to convince to do something, who might feel they're being used," he said.
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