The Archbishop of Philadelphia has said that in his 50 years of voting America has never offered up "two such deeply flawed presidential candidates" as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Speaking to the University of Notre Dame yesterday, the Catholic Archbishop Charles J Chaput added that both politicians in different ways represented "very bad news" for the US.

He said in five decades, "the major parties have never, at the same time, offered two such deeply flawed presidential candidates. The 1972 Nixon/McGovern race comes close. But 2016 wins the crown."

The Archbishop went on: "Only God knows the human heart, so I presume that both major candidates for the White House this year intend well and have a reasonable level of personal decency behind their public images. But I also believe that each candidate is very bad news for our country, though in different ways...One candidate, in the view of a lot of people, is a belligerent demagogue with an impulse control problem. And the other, also in the view of a lot of people, is a criminal liar, uniquely rich in stale ideas and bad priorities."

Archbishop Chaput, who gave a lengthy reflection on the 2016 election and politics in general, spoke up for the political process, however. "The choices we make and the actions we take do make a difference," he said. "The political vocation matters because, done well, it can ennoble the society it serves."

But, he added: "We've reached a moment when our political thinking and vocabulary as a nation seem exhausted. The real effect that we as individuals have on the government and political class that claim to represent us...is so slight that it breeds indifference and anger."