The President and the Pope

These days, most politicians are pagans who have precious little time for arcane religious matters. Though, like Jorge Luis Borges, they regard theology as a branch of fantastic literature, in predominantly Roman Catholic countries almost all of them are more than willing to attend Mass on ceremonial occasions and, after putting on a suitably pious expression, make out that they have been deeply impressed by the pacifistic teachings of whoever is, or recently was, Pope.

Even Javier Milei – whose religious views may be described as somewhat unorthodox – told the local clergy that he greatly appreciated the wisdom of the late Pope Francis, or Jorge Bergoglio as he was before becoming Bishop of Rome, while most of his libertarian followers, plus a number of Kirchnerites and others, said much the same when they marked the first anniversary of his demise.

For such people, the willingness of Donald Trump to say Pope Leo XIV was “terrible for foreign policy” and, “weak on crime,” was unforgiveable. They failed to realise that unlike them, in his uncouth way Trump was paying the pontiff a compliment by taking him seriously. Instead of treating Leo’s  remarks as the maunderings of an unworldly holy man who should be praised for his idealism and then ignored, as so many politicians regularly do, he thought the Pope’s allusions to the war he is waging against the Iranian ayatollahs because he believes they were close to acquiring a nuclear arsenal were worth responding to.   

As was to be expected, in his dispute with Trump, Leo has been warmly supported by a host of leftists and others who usually have nothing but contempt for everything associated with Christianity which, as far as they are concerned, has long been a colonialist and imperialistic creed that over the millennia has caused a great deal of harm. In the United Kingdom, they seem to regard flags with crosses on them as fascist emblems that should be kept hidden because displaying them could wound the feelings of those arriving from what was once called “the Third World.” It would appear that many churchmen agree with them, which is why of late, high-ranking Anglicans and some Catholics have been going out of the way to promote causes that blatantly contradict the traditions of their faith but which are dear to the hearts of progressives.

Despite all this, there are signs that in Western countries old-fashioned Christianity is making a comeback. For evident reasons, many younger people want their lives to be more meaningful and do not find what they are looking for in the secular cults that, since the closing decades of the 19th century, have been providing them with a substitute for the more thorough-going belief systems of former times that purported to connect them with something less fleeting than their earthly existence. They yearn for a stronger mixture than the wishy-washy brew served up by preachers of universal tolerance.

In part, this may be a reaction to the inroads that are being made by militant Islam. Confronted by people who seem to take their religious certainties quite literally, troubled Westerners feel that unless they equip themselves with something equally powerful, they will be unable to resist the blows being meted out to what they see as a threat to their way of life and will end up like what is left of the Christian minorities in the Middle East and North Africa. Trump, whose real beliefs are unknown, and his vice-president, J.D. Vance – who is a Catholic convert who enjoys theological debates – clearly share this view. They see themselves as soldiers fighting the good fight on behalf of Western civilisation and would very much like the Pope to imitate predecessors such as Urban II and bless their crusade.

Much to Trump’s bewilderment, large swathes of the university-educated in the United States, and even bigger ones in Europe, are unwilling to recognise that when the Iranian holy warriors loudly proclaim themselves determined to conquer the West, beginning with the “little Satan” (Israel) before going on to deal with the “big Satan” (the United States), they really mean what they say. However, instead of coming together to confront the threat such fanatics present, many Westerners want to see the Jihadists as misunderstood victims of imperialist infamy who are entitled to go on a rampage because they were provoked by US misdemeanours in parts of the Muslim world.

Such people brush over what happened to Iranian leftists half a century ago after they helped the mullahs overthrow the Shah: thousands were condemned to death and hanged for waging war against God. They are also indifferent to the fate of homosexuals who are regularly treated in an identical manner.

In addition to taking a swipe at Pope Leo, Trump went so far as to post on social media a picture concocted by Artificial Intelligence in which he posed as a Christ-like figure giving aid and comfort to the sick. Passing over the probability that, when he walked this earth, Jesus Christ did not look much like a burly blond North American, what was interpreted as an attempt by Trump to persuade people that he was playing a similar role to the Messiah did not go down at all well with many of his Christian supporters who back him because they share his distaste for the progressive elites who openly despise them. To appease angry members of the so-called “Christian Right,” he quickly removed the offending item from his Truth Social site.

Like his immediate predecessor as Catholic Pope, Leo is reluctant to attribute bad motives to people from non-Western parts of the world who have allied themselves with the academic practitioners of “self-criticism” and their friends in the media who insist that the civilisation in which they were raised and provides them with so many benefits is a criminal enterprise that deserves to be done away with.  He seems to take it for granted that – despite the murderous rhetoric of its rulers – the Islamic Republic of Iran is a peace-loving country whose occasional lapses should be blamed on malevolent outsiders such as Trump who fail to understand that war should always be avoided no matter what the cost, even if this includes allowing members of an apocalyptic cult to get their hands on a nuclear bomb for use against “the Zionist entity.”