Trump has finally found someone he can’t bully: the Pope

Last year, I wondered on social media whether Donald Trump was the most pagan president the United States has ever had. I can’t remember exactly what had prompted this, but I remember having the same thought when he said at a remembrance service for the murdered conservative commentator, Charlie Kirk, that, unlike Kirk’s wife, he did not forgive his enemies. He said: “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them”.

Then in March, when the former FBI chief, Robert Mueller, died, Trump said “Good, I’m glad he died”. Mueller had investigated claims that Russia had colluded with the Trump campaign. I repeated the thought that Trump is America’s most pagan president ever.

What else are we to say about a man who so directly contradicts the teachings of Christ in this way? Christ taught us to love our enemies. That’s not easy, but we are to try anyway.

Trump totally rejects this teaching. He says he hates his enemies and wishes the worst for them.

His self-aggrandisement is also anti-Christian. He does not believe that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. He believes that the first must always remain first, unless they are your enemies, in which case you overthrow them. (Which is obviously fair enough in elections!). He believes in the survival of the fittest, the ultimate pagan doctrine.

He does not believe in humility, or service or sacrifice, except maybe sacrificing others for his own ends.

Outlook

The world has always had selfish politicians, of course, and selfish Church leaders. But I can’t think of any politicians of recent times who have so directly repudiated basic Christian teachings. Even atheist politicians tend to pay lip service to the Christian injunction to forgive.

Why then did so many Christians, Evangelicals especially, but also Catholics, vote for Trump in November 2024 despite all his manifest personal failings? I think one reason is that he was not actively promoting policies intended to limit freedom of religion in the way the Obama and Biden administrations were. For example, the Obama administration had taken a court case against an order of nuns who did not want the health insurance plan for their employees covering contraceptives the nuns regarded as potentially abortion-inducing. Similar battles took place under Biden. Both Biden and Obama were also extremely pro-abortion and were pushing trans ideology very hard.

However, it was particularly galling recently to see a group of pastors praying over Trump in the Oval Office. They should have been praying for his conversion.

That might well be exactly what Pope Leo is doing because the two men are increasingly at loggerheads.

An American pope would understand America well, and offer a gentler, more Christian contrast to the bombastic, bullying Trump”

Ahead of last year’s conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis, Vatican correspondents tended to dismiss the chances of Cardinal Robert Prevost becoming pope for the simple reason that he is an American.

The conventional wisdom has always been that you can’t have Americans occupying two of the most important offices in the world, namely that of US president, and that of pope. I just assumed the conventional wisdom was correct and didn’t really think to question it.

But when Cardinal Prevost became Pope Leo XIV, I commented on a number of radio shows that maybe the very fact he is an American and someone like Trump is in the White House helped to tip for his fellow cardinals in his favour in the conclave.

Maybe they decided that an American pope with a very different outlook and style from that of President Trump was exactly what the world needed. There were many reasons for his election, of course, but this may have been one of them.

An American pope would understand America well, and offer a gentler, more Christian contrast to the bombastic, bullying Trump, a case of the ‘quiet American’ vs the noisy one, if you like.

Since his election, the Pope has never directly criticised Trump. Popes don’t attack people by name. But his comments on issues like immigration, and war and peace, are often timed for when Trump is making a move in these areas, and it is clear who he has in mind.

The nearest the Pope has come to criticising Trump by name is when he expressed horror that Trump would threaten to destroy an entire civilisation, as he did very recently in the case of Iran.

We read last week that the papal nuncio to America was called into a meeting in the Pentagon of all places to be questioned about the Vatican’s attitude to American foreign policy. There are all sorts of contradictory reports about what exactly was said at the meeting, but the fact it took place at all, and in such a place, is significant.

Now Trump has finally come out and attacked the pope directly. In one of his characteristic tirades on social media, he accused Pope Leo of being “weak” on crime, “terrible for foreign policy”, adding, “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”

He said he doesn’t believe the Pope is doing a good job.

On his flight to Africa on Monday for his first papal visit to the continent, Leo replied: “To put my message on the same plane as what the president has attempted to do here, I think is not understanding what the message of the Gospel is. And I’m sorry to hear that but I will continue on what I believe is the mission of the Church in the world today.”

There is every chance Trump will step up his attacks. At any moment we can expect him to lash out even more strongly and in a more personalised way. But it would be simply extraordinary for a president to attack a pope in such a manner.

What is interesting in this case, by the way, is that few are currently telling the Church to keep its nose out of politics or to respect Church/State separation (however we are supposed to define that).

Support

But Trump must tread carefully, if only for his own selfish reasons. There are mid-term elections coming in November and the Republicans are very likely to lose their majority in the House of Representatives and maybe in the Senate as well. He is going to need all the votes he can get, including Catholic ones.

Except for the hard-core pro-Trump, MAGA-supporters among them, American Catholics are not going to like their president attacking their pope. His attacks on Leo are very likely to lose both him, and the Republicans more generally, electoral support. This is a battle Trump cannot win. He has finally met a man he cannot bully.