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.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are hearing wrath from voters about the wrong being done when they cut Medicaid funding

To the Editor: I read the New York Times opinion about Mrs. Aldhizer from North Carolina and her severely disabled son. I felt compassion and sadness, not just for her and her family, but for the countless others in our country who have been — or who soon will be — subjected to the cruelty of an administration that refuses to see each of us as human beings.

Mrs. Aldhizer’s concern is the instability of Medicaid over the coming months and years and its impact on her family, and she asks us to help her, a stranger, ensure that the program continues. 

I wonder if she herself extends her call for charity to other issues that are less personal to her, such as the right to protest peacefully without the threat of armed soldiers standing nearby, or the concerns among young people about the effects of climate change, or the trauma of a child sitting in a classroom after seeing a parent dragged off by ICE agents.

It is human nature to see one’s own needs as being of greater importance than the needs of others. I hope Mrs. Aldhizer's brand of conservatism allows her to step outside her own situation to extend the same charity to those whom she will never meet, but who are just as deserving of that charity as her son.

From: Chris Swenson in La Jolla, California

To the Editor: I sympathize with Rachel Roth Aldhizer and her severely disabled son. My own daughter has cerebral palsy and cannot walk, talk or feed herself. She still needs constant care at age 28. Medicaid has been essential for her, and soon she will live in a group home for disabled adults, funded by Medicaid.

Mrs. Aldhizer describes how Medicaid helped her family. My question is this: would she feel the same way about Medicaid if she didn’t have a disabled child❓

In my experience, conservatives are concerned about people different from them only when it affects them personally. They are against gay marriage until they find out their child is gay. They are against gun regulations until a loved one is shot. They are against abortion care until a family member nearly dies from a miscarriage. There are conservatives who were against rights for transgender people but found understanding and empathy within themselves when their child came out as trans.

Perhaps Mrs. Aldhizer has always supported government aid. But when conservatives govern, they typically lower taxes for the wealthy and reduce services for the vulnerable. Kentucky expanded Medicaid in 2014, North Carolina in 2023. Both states had Democratic governors who supported Medicaid expansion. North Carolina had a Republican supermajority that blocked expansion for nearly a decade.

Liberals, for all our faults, are the ones who stand with people unlike ourselves. We insist on help for the disadvantaged. We support Medicaid whether our family needs it or not.

From:  Hedy Kalikoff in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

To the Editor: As a fellow North Carolinian and former Medicaid provider, I fully sympathize with the plight of Rachel Roth Aldhizer’s family and others like them. But I find her call to appeal to the compassion of our legislators misguided.I believe we had ample evidence of the Republicans’ intentions, and preserving Medicaid funding was not a priority for them.

The time to have made our voices heard was at the ballot box. Sadly, (especially to all those who could have voted but chose to stay home....) now it’s too late.

From Cyndy E. Lively in Winston-Salem, N.C.

To the Editor:  I empathize with Rachel Roth Aldhizer and her 4-year-old son. However, we collectively voted for an administration that does not. This sentiment was expressed by Elon Musk when he said, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

As long as we embrace indecent behavior, or remain silent and passive in the face of indecent behavior, we will be a nation unmoved by the suffering of our fellow citizens or the death of an innocent child.

We will not speak up because it becomes increasingly dangerous and scary to do so. We will wrongly believe that the indecent behaviors of our government will be inflicted only on criminals and people who deserve it. Someone else, not us. 

(Maine Writer: First They Came – by Pastor Martin Niemöller:  

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me)

We will misguided and believe this right up to the moment there is scary a knock on our door.

From Jay Ahlbeck in Plainfield, New Jersey