American Catholics support Pope Leo XIV and the world views him as an antidote to poisonous Donald Trump evilism

Since his election in May as the first American pope, Leo XIV has become a political and temperamental counterweight to an incendiary American president. Echo opinion published in The New York Times by David Gibson. 

Pope Leo draws extraordinary large crowds of the faithful

A face-off between the two most prominent Americans on the world stage was inevitable, if only for the contrast between Donald Trump’s blustery inconstancy and Pope Leo’s soft-spoken yet firm dignity. The Pope is “neither quiet nor shy — if he has something to say, he will say it,” in the words of his eldest brother, Louis Prevost. 

Indeed, after Trump sent forces to seize the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the pope declared that Venezuela’s “sovereignty” must be guaranteed along with “the rule of law enshrined in its Constitution.” Leo had already urged the United States not to follow through on threats against Venezuela and criticized the administration’s military buildup in the Caribbean. He also repeatedly lamented the treatment of immigrants by U.S. authorities and called on American clergy members to be vocal and active on the issue, which they have been.

But rather than viewing Pope Leo’s statements as one half of a mano-a-mano between pope and president, they may be better seen as the articulation of a post-Trump global order, one informed by universal values and institutional norms rather than tribal and individual self-interest. Leo is not looking for a fight with Trump; he is looking past him. When he challenges the president’s policies, he does so as an American-born pope recalling the American-inspired system that Trump is dismantling — one that values statesmanship over gamesmanship, the common good over national conquest and common decency over jingoist (over the top patriotism❗💢) bullying.

In early December, Pope Leo met with President Volodymyr Zelensky

leader of the Ukraine and said he would like to visit the country, which has suffered a years long assault from Russia. 

Hours later, he criticized the Trump administration’s peace plan: “Trying to reach a peace agreement without including Europe in the discussions is not realistic,” he said. “The war is in Europe.”

Soon after, in remarks that could have been aimed at the MAGA movement, Pope Leo told European politicians on the center-right that “the mark of any civilized society is that differences are debated with courtesy and respect.” 

Later, the Pope told diplomats that honesty is the greatest virtue in “an international context plagued by prevarications and conflict” and he blasted the “war of words armed with lies, propaganda and hypocrisy.”

Throughout the Christmas season and into the new year, Pope Leo continued to call for a world based on old ideals, pushing for “the strengthening of supranational institutions, not their delegitimization.” He lectured civic leaders on how to be responsible public servants. On Christmas he urged world leaders to pursue peace through dialogue — even as Trump was launching military strikes on Islamic militias in Nigeria, ostensibly to protect Christians.

In his state of the world address to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican on Friday, Leo delivered his most thoroughgoing defense of postwar multilateralism, calling the rule of law “the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence.”

“A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” the pope said. “The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.”

The Catholic Church, it is said, thinks in centuries, and Pope Leo is unlikely to worry about such pushback. He is a fit 70-year-old who could potentially set a papal record as the oldest pope to die in office, outlasting another Leo, his predecessor Leo XIII, who was 93 at his death in 1903. Donald Trump, who turns 80 on June 14, has three years left in his (terrible❗ chaotic 💥) second term and faces political headwinds that has conservatives talking about a post-MAGA vision for the Republican Party. 

Of course, even three more years of Trump could do incalculable damage not only to the United States but to the global commonwealth.

When Leo was elected, there were regular references to the first pope to take that name, Leo the Great, who served in the fifth century amid the declining Roman Empire. As barbarian armies swept across Europe, that first Pope Leo led a delegation to northern Italy to meet Attila the Hun and his invading forces. Leo’s holiness and diplomacy (perhaps aided by a menacing vision Attila was said to have had of SS. Peter and Paul brandishing swords) is credited with persuading Attila to turn back and spare the Italian peninsula.

But a more apt parallel for our current circumstances might be the legend of Leo’s meeting three years later, in 455, with Gaiseric the Vandal outside Rome. On that occasion, it is said, Leo was able to persuade the barbarian king only to spare several large churches so that thousands of Romans could find sanctuary from the ensuing devastation. In the aftermath, Pope Leo and his successors were able to rebuild city and society.

Catholicism has a knack for preserving the best of the past to help seed a better future. Today’s Pope Leo may be the surest guardian of a legacy that America, and the world, will desperately need.