by Bijan Omrani, spiked
Public life can benefit enormously from arguments between popes and presidents.
This past weekend has been a good one for peacemakers, but disappointing for those of us who were enjoying the medieval-style spat between the papacy and the secular powers in the person of the American presidency.
Having been told by US president Donald Trump that he was ‘WEAK on crime and terrible on foreign policy’, Pope Leo offered a textbook display of turning the other cheek. He assured reporters on Saturday that his recent comments about the world ‘ravaged by a handful of tyrants’ had not been made in response to Trump’s earlier outpourings, but had been written separately, a fortnight beforehand, ‘well before the president ever commented on myself’. It was ‘not in my interest at all’ to debate the president, he added.
On Sunday, US vice-president JD Vance thanked the Pope for his pacific remarks. ‘While the media narrative’, he tweeted, ‘constantly gins up conflict – and yes, real disagreements have happened and will happen – the reality is often much more complicated. Pope Leo preaches the gospel, as he should, and that will inevitably mean he offers his opinions on the moral issues of the day… He will be in our prayers, and I hope that we’ll be in his.’
This outbreak of amity among the three men – just as Isaiah prophesied, the ‘calf and the young lion and the fatling’ dwelling together again in concord – may be a blessed relief for those who find it a trifle undignified for the Vicar of Christ and the Leader of the Free World to be engaged in a social-media slugging match. However, we should not be too enticed by the desire for seemliness. The clash is stimulating, epitomising the worth of the resurgent presence of Christianity in politics, both for church and state alike.