Joseph Nye explained the importance of soft power, that is, the ability to impose oneself through moral force rather than material force. Many years before his essay was published, a practical demonstration came none other than from Josef Goebbels. It seems that in 1943 the Reich’s Minister of Propaganda dissuaded Hitler from taking any forceful action against the Vatican which, according to him, would have had a devastating impact on world opinion (and on German Catholics).
The Wehrmacht, which had ruthlessly trampled the borders of all Europe, therefore stopped before the defenseless Leonine walls. What the former Orthodox seminarian Iosif Džugašvili, known as Stalin, had not understood was instead very clear to the Bavarian Catholic, graduate of the religious high school of Rheydt, Josef Goebbels.
Any detective novel is based on the premise that one can be a criminal but not necessarily stupid. Goebbels was undoubtedly one of the worst criminals of the 20th century, but he was not stupid. Today, the American administration instead demonstrates urbi et orbi that one can be both criminal and stupid at the same time.
COMPLEXES AND PREJUDICES
Among the factors of international politics that must be taken into account to analyze it, alongside geography, economy, demography, history, institutions, etc., Nicholas Spykman also included “the petty complexes and prejudices of foreign ministers,” that is, their personal, moral, or other weaknesses.
He concluded by stating that it is “the simultaneous action and interaction” of all these factors that determines “that complex phenomenon known as ‘foreign policy.’”
The lesson is useful today. It is true that between “complexes and prejudices” (albeit petty) and stupidity there is still an abyss; but the principle is clear: the stupidity of individuals with political responsibilities is a factor that must be taken into account, just as other intangible and unmeasurable factors must be considered, such as social psychology, the weight of history, traditions, the sense of identity, and even chance.
But the stupidity of individuals with political responsibilities is not due to chance but to circumstances; and, as far as the current members of the American administration are concerned, it is also measurable.
Indeed, one cannot separate Donald Trump from the 77 million Americans who voted for him on November 5, 2024, fully aware of whom they were dealing with.
Those 77 million chose him because they were disoriented and frightened by the decline of their country, felt daily when seeking medical care, paying university tuition, grocery shopping, filling up the gas tank, buying housing, and so on – all things that, before, were more affordable for them than for any other human being on Earth; disoriented, frightened, and therefore eager to be great again, taking revenge on the rest of the world, guilty of having taken advantage of American generosity. This is to reiterate a fundamental concept: Donald Trump is a product of the dominant social psychology in America (that is, of the circumstances) and not the producer.
Once responsibilities are distributed, let us return to the specific case: the quarrel between the president of the most powerful country in the world and the head of the most powerful political-religious organization in the world, both Americans, both Republicans.
Under normal conditions, there should be no quarrel between them. But the former has given ample evidence of almost never having the slightest idea of what he is talking about; and the latter, the moment he becomes the holder of the throne of Saint Peter, ceases to be American (and, even more so, Republican).
THE CONFLICT
The facts are known: in January, Robert Prevost, who became the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church last spring under the name Leo XIV, spoke very explicitly in his meeting with the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican, stating that “the diplomacy of force, of individuals or groups of allies” has replaced the diplomacy of dialogue, that “war has come back into fashion” and the “fervor” that the principle prohibiting the use of force to violate others’ borders has been abandoned is widespread, that violence has become the “condition for asserting one’s power.”
Faced with such audacity, and accustomed to manifestations of flattery as numerous as they are indecorous, Washington lost patience. The apostolic nuncio (ambassador) in Washington, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, was “summoned” to the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Department of Defense, renamed the Department of War since the soldier Pete Hegseth took charge; according to rumors gathered by Mattia Ferraresi, Undersecretary Elbridge Colby addressed the nuncio with “a harsh paternal lecture warning that the United States has the military power necessary to do whatever it wants, and that the Church would do well to side with them.”
At this point, there would have been a reference to the so-called Avignon Papacy, that is, the period (1309-1377) when the popes moved the seat of the Catholic Church to Avignon where they could be kept under control by the King of France (and where they could control him). The implicit threat from Colby was neither confirmed nor denied by the parties. In any case, Cardinal Pierre, who comes from the most Catholic region of France, Brittany, knows what is being talked about.
It is nonetheless curious that Colby, who is not a fool, referred (if the reference was indeed made) to King Philip the Fair and not to Napoleon – who also had two popes kidnapped (Pius VI in 1798 and Pius VII in 1809), in the same style with which the Americans kidnapped Maduro.
Whatever the tone of the discussion (other Catholic sources describe it as “frank,” which, in diplomatic language, means that all sorts of things were said), the situation has only worsened since then.
At the Palm Sunday celebration in March, Leo XIV doubled down, stating that “Jesus does not listen to the prayers of those who make wars,” with an implicit, but not too subtle, reference to soldier Pete Hegseth, who has turned his rallies from the Pentagon into religious ceremonies with crusade tones (not by chance, among the numerous tattoos spread over his body as a bodybuilder is a nice “Deus Vult,” the slogan of the First Crusade; and his book is titled, to be clear, American Crusade).
In anticipation of Easter, Hegseth circulated an email stating: “Today, Good Friday, there will be a Protestant service (not a Catholic Mass) in the Pentagon chapel.” An employee of the department commented: “I guess it’s to let Catholics know that people like them are not welcome.”
Speaking at the White House on Palm Sunday, Trump recalled that that day “Jesus entered Jerusalem while the crowd welcomed him with praise, honoring him as king”; adding with a sly smile: “Today they call me ‘king’” (the video was later removed from the White House website).
At the same ceremony, evangelical pastor Paula White-Cain, head of the White House Office of Faith, said: “Mr. President… you have been betrayed, arrested, and unjustly accused. It is a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior has shown us. But for him, it did not end there, and it will not end there for you either.”
On Easter Day, it is known, the president threatened to kill “an entire civilization” in one day, a statement described as “truly unacceptable” by the Pope, not only because it is contrary to international law but because it is contrary to morality.
Then, on April 11, during a homily, the Pope denounced the “illusion of omnipotence,” calling for the interruption of the “demonic cycle of evil.” He then added: “Enough with the idolatry of oneself and money! Enough with the ostentation of power! Enough with war!” He never named Trump, sensitive souls pointed out, but one does not need to be a fine exegete to understand to whom he was referring: indeed, “oneself,” “money,” “ostentation of power,” and “war” are, in order, the only things Donald Trump cares about – and indeed idolizes.
At that point, Trump’s fury overflowed. On April 13, he published a long post of 334 words in which it reads, among other things, that Leo XIV is “WEAK on crime and terrible in foreign policy… He thinks it’s OK for Iran to have nuclear weapons.” And then: “I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States,” also stating that Leo would have been elected thanks to him: “If I weren’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”
In short, “Leo should get a grip as Pope, use common sense, stop catering to the radical left.” He then concluded: “He is damaging the Catholic Church!”
Soon after, he doubled down, declaring that Leo “likes crime” and that “he’s a very liberal person” (remember that “liberal” in America covers a spectrum ranging from vague progressivism to the far left). Finally, he posted the AI image that everyone has seen, in which, literally dressed as Jesus, he heals the sick. The post was withdrawn after scandalized reactions from some of his evangelical supporters; and Trump justified himself by claiming that “the fake news media” made it all up, and that the post represented him as “a doctor” who cures America’s ills.
The last stage of this reconstruction – which in the long run becomes boring – is Leo XIV’s statement on the plane taking him to Algiers: “I have no fear of the Trump administration,” accompanied by various clarifications about the exclusively religious and moral nature of his mission.
THE UNEQUAL CONFLICT
Before the article you are reading is published, there will very likely be further developments. But based on what has happened so far, we can draw some considerations. All revolve around a simple concept: the clash between Trump and the Pope is completely unequal; and, even though the Pope certainly has his own troubles, in the long run Trump is destined to lose it.
I recently wrote about the “real asymmetry between the United States and Iran” in terms of accumulated political experience. This is equally true, if not more so, for the Catholic Church, which has been immersed in the political arena since the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
As Thomas Hobbes wrote, later taken up by Edward Gibbon: “The Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof,” the Papacy is nothing other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned on its grave.
The short political experience of the United States, I said in that article, was not accumulated simply because the Americans were so strong as to think they could do without it. And that is why it was so easy for Trump and his praetorians to throw eighty years of foreign policy into the trash and ruin what had been built over that entire period.
Speaking of who harms whom, Trump already has, alone and without the Pope’s help, several measures of advantage.
However, the presidency’s self-harm is magnified by the importance of the role Catholics have had and continue to have in their American province, a topic to which I have dedicated an entire book.
First of all, it must be remembered that there is a whole strand of historical and political thought according to which the true “American identity” is that of the WASP – White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant – and that Catholicism is, for some, an alien element, and for others, pernicious.
From the theory of the existence of a “Teutonic germ” spread by Angles, Jutes, and Saxons first to the British Isles and then, from there, to America, historian Michael Lind derived the conviction that the institutions of the Germanic tribes – “the representative assembly, the jury system, the militia” – were displaced starting in 1066 by the “Norman yoke, consisting of the dual evils of continental feudalism and Roman Catholic Christianity.”
Nothing new, considering that John Adams, future second president of the United States, had already written in 1765 that “the dark ages” lasted in the British Isles “until God, in his benevolent providence, raised up the champions who began and led the Reformation.”
The thesis of the “nation of WASP settlers,” as opposed to the “nation of immigrants,” was relaunched at the beginning of this century by Samuel Huntington, in a little-known but very important book.
In that text, Huntington reiterated the concept already expressed in his much more famous Clash of Civilizations, according to which at the base of “Western” identity lies Catholic Christianity corrected by the Reformation.
Latin America, for Huntington, is not part of his “Western civilization” because it is too Catholic; when evangelicals finally manage to colonize it, then, and only then, will it become part of “Western civilization” – as if a civilization were a club.
The anti-Catholic obs
