OK, so who had Pope Leo XIV versus President Donald J. Trump on their fight card, let alone bingo card?
Today, many shocked posters on the internet are saying they didn’t. But I did.
I knew from the moment that the former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica last May 8 as the first U.S.-born pope that the mild-mannered, moderate Chicagoan, a registered Republican – tutored by Pope Francis, his cagey, liberal predecessor, and selected by the equally shrewd College of Cardinals – would be not only a counterbalance to Trump, in the polite parlance of academia, but a thorn in his side. Indeed, the new pope’s very first words were antipodal to the president’s antagonistic style as he addressed the faithful with Jesus’ post-Easter greeting to his disciples: “Peace be with you.”
And the pope’s peace has been with immigrants (documented and undocumented), refugees, the Oct. 7 hostages and the victims of wars in Gaza, Iran and Ukraine. As I’ve written elsewhere on this blog, the Roman Catholic Church – whatever you think about it, and it has much to answer for – has always been in the life business. This aligned with the Trump Administration’s agenda as long as Roe versus Wade made abortion legal. But once the landmark pro-choice law was overturned, all bets were off. Presaging that parting, Leo offered what may have been his most telling commentary to date, not in any encyclical but in an off-the-cuff remark to a reporter that you can’t be pro-life if you are anti-abortion and anti-immigrant.
All life, then, is valuable in the eyes of God, so no pope is ever for war. It’s antithetical to his role as the Vicar of Christ. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t just wars that must be fought but rather that peaceful dialogue must be paramount. And migrants – the backbone of the United States and the bane of Trump – make up the bulk of the Church. So a collision course was inevitable.
What no one could foresee was an incident that took place in January but has just come to light in the center-right Free Press, which reported that Pentagon Undersecretary Elbridge A. Colby called Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican ambassador to the United States, on the carpet and allegedly read him the riot act for Leo’s perceived attack on Trump in his anti-war world address that never mentioned the president. Catholic convert Colby told Pierre that Leo better be on the U.S.’ side, while another official invoked the Avignon Papacy, in which Pope Boniface VIII was held hostage in gruesome circumstances by French King Philip IV in 1303, setting up a succession of popes held in papal “Babylonian captivity.” (Waggish Jonathan V. Last on The Bulwark, a conservative podcast, wondered if Trump might in turn kidnap Leo and send him to Martha’s Vineyard.)
The Trump Administration has said that the report is a mischaracterization of the meeting, which was a frank, productive exchange of ideas.
First, kudos to the Trump Administration for having one member who can throw around the Avignon Papacy. Somebody took AP World History. Of course, many of the members of the administration are Ivy Leaguers, although these days, a historian told me, that doesn’t mean much.
Second, long before Avignon, there was Henry II of England and pal St. Thomas Becket, who was the king’s man as chancellor until he became God’s as archbishop. Henry, who forgot that the job often defines the man, was said to have uttered something like, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” which his boorish barons took as their cue to murder Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Cut to Henry’s remorse, public atonement and the 1964 adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s terrific play about church and state, “Becket,” with drinking buddies Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole playing against type as the archbishop and the king respectively.
Closer to our viewing history, we get the Tudors – the much-divorcing Henry VIII, to be specific, and his own martyred, sainted chancellor, another Thomas, More (died 1535).
So the state’s attempt to control the church is nothing new. And sometimes the state and the church are in lockstep as in the case of the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But never before has there been a report of an overtly thuggish American response to the Vatican. It’s said to be behind Leo’s decision not to visit the United States for the 250th birthday celebration July 4. (Instead, he’ll receive the Liberty Medal via video on July 3 and then on the Fourth, visit the Italian island of Lampedusa, a gateway of migrants.)
The chances that Leo would come to the U.S. for the Fourth were always slim. He’s been away from the U.S. longer than he has lived here and anyway, he belongs to the world now. He might visit in 2030 if Atlanta gets to host World Youth Day. By that time a certain administration it will be in the rearview mirror – please God.
At present that administration, which uses Christianity but doesn’t understand it, is very much front and center. From Trump’s domination of Ramadan, Passover and Easter, with bombs, firings and F-bombs, to former cabinet members Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi demonstrating tremendous compassion for themselves but none for the lives they ruined to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Protestant-only Easter service at the Pentagon to Vice President JD Vance, the administration’s highest ranking Catholic official, being clearly unprepared for a reporter’s question about Avignon-gate, the Trump government has shown that while it may be Christian, it is not Christlike.