God is not mocked and it turns out, neither is his vicar on Earth, the Pope. There has been a vigorous response to President Donald Trump’s denunciation of Pope Leo as an utter wet (“Pope Leo is WEAK on crime and terrible for Foreign Policy”), not least from Republican Catholics. The President’s former best friend, Italian premier Giorgia Meloni, called it “unacceptable”.
As for the President’s mock-up of himself as Christ healing the sick (“a joke,” according to Vice President JD Vance), which Trump later insisted showed him merely as a doctor, it has gone down even less well. As Vance observed: “A lot of people weren’t understanding his humour in that case.” And an awful lot of them, judging by the posts, were or are Trump supporters. As an opinion piece in The New York Times by a former executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter put it, Trump has Pope derangement syndrome. Or to put it another way, he looks like he’s channelling the Antichrist.
This stand-off between the papacy and the White House started with the US incursion into Venezuela, which Pope Leo condemned. It was presaged by long-standing Church criticism of US immigration policy, especially from bishops representing Hispanic communities.
Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, also took a pro-migrant stance, but in Leo’s case, his time as a bishop in Venezuela gave his condemnation particular bite.
The Pope is a peacenik, which is not quite to say that he is a pacificist. But – news to Pete Hegseth who invoked the God of war for the conflict in Iran – he is, to state the obvious, quoting Jesus Christ. At Easter, Leo said: “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!”
On Good Friday, he posted a message that anyone who is a disciple of Jesus Christ “is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs”.
That was more or less quoting Christ when he told St Peter to drop his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Put your sword back in its place, for all who take the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Is the Pope a Catholic? Well, yes.
But there’s an interesting dynamic to all this, which is Trump’s remarkable capacity to invest his opponents with unexpected appeal. Just as his vigorous support for conservatives in Canada and Australia and, most recently Hungary, was followed by the election of their opponents, so his attack on Leo may backfire (“he was only put there by the church because he is an American and they thought that was the best way to deal with President Donald J Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican”).
It doesn’t take much for Leo to strike an anti- Trump posture; he has simply observed that he has “no fear” of the Trump administration.
There was an interesting interview on CBS recently with no fewer than three American cardinals, where they reported that Leo had encouraged them to sound off about war and the treatment of migrants.
Cardinal Blase Cupich was especially vigorous about the White House social media treatment of the campaign in Iran: “It is sickening to splice together movie cuts with actual bombing and targeting of people for the purposes of entertainment. This is not who we are. We’re better than this.”
It is trenchant observations like this, and Leo’s anti-war sentiment, that may yet make the church attractive to American liberals, notwithstanding the neuralgic issue of abortion plus gay marriage and the running sore of historical clerical sexual abuse.
Leo questioned last year whether the “inhuman treatment of immigrants” is consistent with being pro-life, an interesting dig at conservatives. In the last presidential election, Trump won the Catholic vote over Kamala Harris by 55 to 43 per cent.
They may be less keen to vote Republican next time.
All this has a bearing, of course, on the future of JD Vance, who is a Catholic convert and has met the Pope (together with Marco Rubio, another Catholic).
When asked about the stand-off between the President and the Pope, Vance replied that the Church should “stick to matters of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church… And let the President of the United States stick to dictating American public policy”.
He added that the stand-off was “a natural thing. I’m sure it will happen in the future and it’s not that big of a thing that it happened in the past”.
He is, of course, perfectly correct.
Yet it is a big deal that Trump has picked on the Pope. The Make America Great Again movement is nothing if not pro-God. For the President to pick on his vicar on Earth is a bad, bad look.
“How many divisions has the Pope?” asked Stalin once. President Trump may yet find out.
Hence then, the article about trump has pope derangement syndrome was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Trump has Pope derangement syndrome )
Also on site :
- 90 Years Later, the World's Most Famous Photo Exposes the Dark Side of Viral Fame: 'I Wish She Hadn't Taken My Picture'
- ‘We have to be able to walk and chew gum’ on government spending, says budget chairman on debt crisis and national security
- Businessman sues British Airways for £50k claiming cut finger caused ‘nightmares and flashbacks’