President Trump with pastor Robert James Jeffress 
A US-based Irish priest has hit back at President Donald Trump’s endorsement of a “bigoted anti-Catholic” pastor during Easter weekend.
Fr Sean McManus, President of the Irish National Caucus, gave his disapproval of a service from Southern Baptist Evangelical pastor Robert James Jeffress Jr on Easter Sunday, which was approved by President Trump on Twitter.
“This news about the vicious bigotry of Rev. Jeffress from Texas is appalling,” he said.
Ignorance
“It is appalling in its shocking ignorance, its malicious lying, and its pathological hatred. Sadly, Jeffress reflects the horrific anti-Catholic bigotry upon which the British government deliberately founded the artificial, sectarian, anti-Catholic State of Northern Ireland.”
He added: “How deplorable that the President of the United States endorses, in effect, the pathology of this fanatical anti-Catholicism. How does this help build up The Beloved Community in Northern Ireland?”
Jeffress is US President Donald Trump’s favourite pastor, the Senior Minister of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas and a Fox News contributor.
In 2010, Jeffress claimed Catholicism was a “mystery”, “fake”, “false”, “cult-like”, “pagan”, “counterfeit” religion, that the Church was “corrupt” and created by Satan during a segment on his radio show ‘Pathway to Victory’.
