The world has been shocked, but I would venture hardly surprised, by the contretemps between the blustery American president and the steadfast American-born pope over Iran that absorbed much of last week. President Donald J. Trump, incensed over Pope Leo XIV’s antiwar stance, accused him of being weak on crime, terrible at foreign policy and ungrateful for his in effect making him pope. (Apparently, even Trump subscribes to the belief that an American pope serving as a counterweight to an American president was what the College of Cardinals had in mind when they elected Cardinal Robert Prevost pope.) For his part, Leo doubled down on his message of peace, grounded in the Gospels.
But this isn’t the whole story or the only one….
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