It should be up to people on the state level, not the federal government, to decide if the Confederate flag should continue to fly on South Carolina's statehouse property and in other locations, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Sunday.
"These are decisions that should be made by people," the former Pennsylvania senator told ABC "This Week" correspondent Martha Raddatz
in an interview in Charleston, S.C., whose Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church opened for services just days after its pastor and eight parishioners were murdered. "I don't think the federal government or federal candidates should be making decisions on everything. This is a decision that needs to be made in South Carolina."
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On Saturday, Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president in 2012,
called for the immediate removal of the Confederate battle flag from outside the South Carolina Statehouse, leading Santorum and other 2016 GOP presidential candidates in to stating their positions on the issue.
Many see the Confederate flag as "a symbol of racial hatred," Romney tweeted on Saturday. "Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims."
Romney, with his statement, joins President Barack Obama and civil rights leaders in calling for the flag to come down while the nation continues to struggle with Wednesday's mass murders.
The man charged in the crimes, 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, held the Confederate flag in photographs on a website and displayed the flags of defeated white-supremacist governments in Africa on his Facebook page.
Santorum said that like all people, he has an opinion on the Confederate flag, but he thinks "the opinion of people here in South Carolina and having them work through this difficulty is much more important than politicizing it."
Meanwhile, the former senator told Raddatz that there is no doubt that the actions of 21-year-old Dylann Roof, who has admitted to the murders, was both a hate crime and an act of terrorism.
"There is no question when someone comes into a church for the reasons of racism and hate, they're trying to terrorize people, " said Santorum. "I don't think there's any question that this is about an act of terrorism. It's purely evil as we have seen in this country in a long, long time."
With federal hate crime charges being added to the nine counts of murder Roof faces, "this young man is going to get justice served on him," Santorum said.
Still, Santorum, a devout Catholic, said that the spirit of forgiveness he has seen in Charleston in the past few days has "given me more hope than I have seen in a long time."
Late last week, family members of some of the shooting's victims testified in a bond hearing for Roof that they forgive him for his actions.
"If I were a pastor in a church today, I would play that bond hearing of those family members getting up and showing true forgiveness, showing that how the pain of what this young man did their families and then being able to forgive," said Santorum. "We saw it here in Charleston, right here, within 24 hours, the worst of America and the best of America. I think that gives hope, the real sense that we have people here who understand that the way to overcome all of this horrible violence is through resilience."
On the show Santorum also discussed Donald Trump, his latest challenger for the GOP nomination, telling Raddatz that he likes Trump and considers him "a good man."
"Four years ago at the end of my campaign, I talked about what a wonderful experience it was running for president," said Santorum, who ran in 2012 for the White House. "I quipped, 'everyone should run for president.' Little did I know that people would take me up on it. It looks like everyone is running for president. It's not a bad thing to have a whole bunch of different points of view out there running for president."
According to ABC News, Santorum, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, and California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters were among those attending services at the church Sunday morning.