Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that the Pope is wrong for supporting diplomatic relations between United States and Cuba.
Christie said on “State of the Union” that the Pope’s “infallibility is on religious matters, not on political ones,” and suggested that the President should not extend diplomatic relations to governments who harbor fugitives.
Tapper: The Pope will soon be in the United States for his first ever visit. Right now the Pope is in Cuba. He helped broker the new steps of diplomatic ties between the United States and the leadership, the communist leadership, of that country. Do you think the Pope made a mistake?
Christie: I just think the Pope was wrong. And so the fact is that his infallibility is on religious matters, not on political ones. And the fact is that, for me, I just believe that when you have a government that is harboring fugitives, murdering fugitives, like JoAnne Chesimard, who murdered a state policeman in New Jersey in cold blood, was broken out of prison and has been harbored for the last 40 plus years by a Cuban government that has paid her and held her up as a hero. That this president can extend diplomatic relations with that country without getting her returned so she could serve the prison sentence that she was sentenced to by a jury of her peers in New Jersey is outrageous. And so I just happen to disagree with the Pope on this one.