OPINION:
Pope Leo XIV and President Trump aren’t bosom buddies.
The president says the pope is “weak on crime and terrible on foreign policy.”
The pope, who has condemned the war with Iran’s terrorist regime in the strongest possible terms, says that if Mr. Trump follows through with his threat to attack Iran’s infrastructure, it will be a “sign of the hatred, the division, the destruction human beings are capable of.”
The most sensible course for Mr. Trump would be to simply ignore the pope. Most Catholics do. Still, the president always rises to a challenge, even when it’s unnecessary.
When it comes to elections, American Catholics aren’t taking their cue from Rome. In 2024, 55% of Catholics voted for Mr. Trump despite the pointed criticism of the president by Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis. This apparently includes the pope’s eldest brother, a Chicago-area voter.
Pope Leo chooses his targets carefully, no pun intended.
He could speak out against the worldwide plague of abortion more than in passing. He could lament low fertility and the effects of gender-identity politics. He could focus attention on the slaughter of Christians in Africa.
As the first American pope, perhaps Leo wants to show that he has no loyalty to his native land. He also knows that condemning America’s actions in Iran will endear him to the elites who ordinarily despise Catholicism.
The pope says, “God does not bless any conflict.” Still, the Bible is full of examples of God doing just that. The Catholic Church has a just war theory that goes back to St. Augustine.
Does Pope Leo understand what we’re up against? The Iranian regime murdered approximately 45,000 of its own people in January. It is the principal state sponsor of terrorism. It will never give up its quest for nuclear weapons, which it has every intention of using as part of its apocalyptic religion.
The pope says peace is achieved “only” through “dialogue.” Is he familiar with the history of World War II? Neville Chamberlain did not achieve peace in our time with the 1938 Munich Agreement. Instead, he paved the way for a world war in which 80 million died.
America achieved peace in 1945 by crushing Germany and Japan militarily and convincing their leaders that continuing the conflict would be national suicide.
Reasonable people can negotiate their differences. Totalitarian thugs and terrorist butchers do not make reliable negotiating partners. For them, diplomacy is war by other means.
The monsters who build death camps and hang dissidents from cranes after torturing them and who support rape as an instrument of war are not susceptible to dialogue.
The pacifism Pope Leo preaches works only when people are willing to fight to defend civilization. Those of us who aren’t prisoners of inflexible dogmas have a moral obligation to oppose evil.
The pope is on a “Denial of Reality” tour. Last week, he was in Algeria, where he spoke of “the rich diversity of Muslims and Christians in our shared aspiration for dignity, love, justice and peace. In a world where division and wars sow pain and death, living in unity and peace is a compelling sign.”
To believe this is a compelling sign of hopeless naivete.
In 1955, Algeria was home to more than 1 million Catholics and 140,000 Jews. Today, there are 8,000 Catholics and fewer than 200 Jews. Is Leo aware of this? Does he even care?
According to the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom: “Algeria engages in systematic repression of religious communities. Authorities have persisted in their crackdown on Evangelical Protestant Churches, shuttering and denying legal registration to churches — including the two largest congregations in the country — and detaining members.”
Other countries where Muslims and Christians are not living in unity and peace include Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia.
According to Open Doors, a global nonprofit dedicated to supporting persecuted Christians, of the 10 countries where the persecution of Christians is most severe, all but one is Muslim.
The pope should worry less about questions of war and peace and more about the fate of his church. The American Catholic Church is in sustained, long-term decline. The percentage of self-identified Catholics has fallen from 24% in 2007 to 19% today. Only 62% of those raised Catholic remain in the church, and often the affiliation is nominal.
If the Vatican was more spiritual and less political, perhaps that would not be the case.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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