Castel Gandolfo, Italy - While slapping back against President Donald Trump's brutal anti-immigrant agenda, Pope Leo XIV said he has a "great love" for the US, but wants to be a pontiff who just "happens to be American."
Leo made the comments on Wednesday night during an interview with NBC News on the sidelines of a prayer event at Castel Gandolfo, the pontiff's summer residence.
"I think of myself more as the pope who happens to be American," he said during the interview. "Not to belittle what it means to be an American."
"I have great love for America but I understand my mission as having a very important dimension, which is precisely being pastor of a universal church and having a voice and an opportunity to speak to people throughout the world."
Asked what the 70-year-old head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics loved about America, he responded: "So many things."
"What America stands for, the sense of freedom, the sense of opportunity, the sense of having invited, for generations, people from around the world to be part of America," he said.
He then made a thinly veiled swipe at the Trump administration's immigration agenda, pointing out that both his grandparents were immigrants.
"I come from a family that – my grandparents were immigrants. On my mother's side, we have people who were both slaves and slave owner," Leo said.
Leo has repeatedly spoken up for migrants during his papacy, calling the Trump administration's anti-migrant clampdown "inhumane." His activism has seen him attacked repeatedly by Trump and other administration officials.
"There's a history of, if you will, growing up in the kind of experience that helps me to recognize myself," Leo said. "I continue to hold the principles that have been a part of being American for so many years – that will continue."