Every time there’s a headline that the war in Iran may be winding down, bombs go off and wind it right back up again. So maybe I shouldn’t say that the president has cooled his jets when it comes to the pope, but he has taken a break from going off on the Holy Father.
If you read Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts, you’ll see that the war with Iran continues to preoccupy him; of course it does. But his messages don’t show a man who engages and then moves on, ever. Instead, he doubles back as reliably as the surf, refreshing beloved grievances and favorite hatreds in perpetuity.
If I did not know the result of his actions, but only had his messages to go on, I would be moved to pity for someone whose most unwinnable war is with himself. During his first term as president of the United States, he posted on Tuesday, “I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’” In between messages about sending various Democrats to prison, he repeatedly boasts that “I’m winning a War BY A LOT,” posts a closing-time video of Sinatra singing “My Way” and a story about Ron DeSantis signing a bill to rename the airport in Palm Beach after Donald J. Trump. How any of these compensatory communications is supposed to help our country, I could not say.
So no, I don’t think his issues with Leo are history; the pope is not going to stop preaching the Gospel, which the president not only takes poorly, but personally. But by opposing him so foolishly, Trump has only bolstered Leo.
Never in my life has it been cool to be Catholic, but something has happened. And that something is that while Leo stands up, calmly and steadfastly, for what Christ said about peacemakers, welcoming the stranger, and feeding the hungry, the president’s tantrums only boomerang outside his bubble.
“All lapsed Catholics are activating like sleeper agents,” the webcomic creator and science fiction author Shaenon K. Garrity posted on Bluesky. You bet they are. Suddenly, non-practicing Catholics – I reject that word ‘lapsed’ – who didn’t know they had one bit of fond feeling left for the church are talking to me about riding at dawn with Leo.
Maybe you really are a miracle worker, Mr. President. And all you had to do was pretend to be Jesus and then lie about it.
It’s not just Catholics, of course, who have responded this way to Trump’s war on Leo. The pope “is the only one getting me through this,” one non-Catholic friend told me – the ‘this’ being Trump’s second term.
And you don’t have to have read “Confessions” or prayed to Augustine’s mother, St. Monica – IYKYK – to see JD Vance lecturing an Augustinian pope on just war theory as kind of like offering Daniel Boulud or Paul Bocuse – the late French “pope of gastronomy” – some tips on how to make an omelet.
I did not need a poll to tell me this, but as of Tuesday, there is one, from Reuters/Ipsos, and it says, as per the Axios headline, that “Pope Leo’s popularity withstands Trump’s papal attacks.” The Daily Beast puts it this way: “Trump Hit by Humiliating Poll in His Unholy War With the Pope.” Either way, Leo’s approval rating among those surveyed was 60%, and Trump’s was 36%.
I wasn’t sure the moral authority leveled by the cover-up of the clerical sex abuse of children could ever be recovered. But Trump’s disfigured response to Leo has, without question, helped the church even in that, which remains the work of generations.
How odd that Trump, who is so canny in so many ways, would not know that this would be the result of his attacks, given that this is just what happens every time his people see him being “persecuted.” It only strengthens their ties to him and makes even those who may have been drifting away feel fiercely protective.
To the extent that Trump has a plan, I don’t think it was to Make Rome Great Again. But all this time I’ve been looking for one good thing he’s ever done, and this might be it.
