Pope Francis on Sunday said he won’t label Islam as “terrorist” because that would be unfair and not true.

Reporters aboard the papal plane flying him home after a pilgrimage to Poland asked him why he never uses the world “Islam” to describe terrorism.

While in Poland, Francis made an unscheduled stop at a church in Krakow to implore God to protect people from the “devastating wave” of terrorism around the world.

Francis replied that “it’s not right to identify Islam with violence. It’s not right and it’s not true.”

He added: “I believe that in every religion there is always a little fundamentalist group.”

“I don’t like to talk of Islamic violence because every day, when I go through the newspapers, I see violence, this man who kills his girlfriend, another who kills his mother-in-law,” Francis said, in apparent reference to crime news in the predominantly Catholic country of Italy. “And these are baptized Catholics. If I speak of Islamic violence, then I have to speak of Catholic violence.”

As for the Islamic State group, he said it “presents itself with a violent identity card, but that’s not Islam.”

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