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Posts Tagged ‘POPE PIUS X11’

POPES AND TYRANTS: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, RELIGION, Social commentary on April 21, 2026 at 12:10 am

It’s become commonplace for liberals to attack President Donald Trump as a reincarnated Adolf Hitler—and Republicans as Nazis.       

And Republicans furiously deny this, even as they embrace many of the same tactics—if not the goals—of Nazi Germany’s onetime rulers.

Throughout his first term as President, Trump adopted Hitler’s method of “negotiation” “Do what I want—or I’ll destroy you!” And it has remained so since his re-taking office on January 20, 2025. 

Opinion | Yes, it's okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don't let me stop you. - The Washington Post

On February 28, Trump—in concert with Israel—launched a series of devastating, unprovoked airstrikes against Iran.          

Asked by a reporter how long the war would last, Trump arrogantly replied: “Any time I want it to end, it will end.” 

But then Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% to 30% of the world’s total daily oil supply passes.

Gas prices in the United States immediately rose. Analysts warned that if the disruption continued, gasoline prices could exceed $5 per gallon.

Strait of Hormuz

Facing an apparently unwinnable war that he had started, Trump found himself facing an unexpected opponent: Pope Leo X1V.

According to Christopher Hale, a political consultant and the editor of the popular Letters from Leo newsletter: Trump’s Pentagon has threatened to declare war on the Vatican.

“In January [2026], behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre-Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States—and delivered a lecture,” said Hale in an interview. 

“America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world,” Colby and his associates told the cardinal. “The Catholic Church had better take its side.” 

One American official “reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.”

Two weeks after the confrontation, the Vatican declined Trump’s invitation to host Pope Leo for the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary in July, 2026. 

The Vatican obelisk in St. Paul’s Square

Livioandronico2013, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

According to sources in the Vatican and Americans briefed on the Pentagon meeting: Colby’s team studied the Pope’s January state-of-the-world address. They decided it was an attack on Trump. 

What “enraged them most” was Leo’s line: “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.” 

“The Pentagon read that sentence as a frontal challenge to the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine’”Trump’s self-named update of the Monroe Doctrine.

Issued by President James Monroe on December 2, 1823, it officially prohibited European colonization and interference in the Western Hemisphere. And it was backed by the threat of an armed response to any such attempt.

On April 12, 2026, Pope Leo said that praying for peace was a way to “break the demonic cycle of evil” to build instead the Kingdom of God where there are no swords, drones or “unjust profit.

Photograph of Pope Leo XIV wearing papal regalia and glasses and slightly smiling. His dress consists of a white cassock with matching pellegrina and with white-fringed fascia, silver pectoral cross, and white zucchetto.

Pope Leo XIV

“It is here that we find a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive,” he said. “Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death.”

On April 12, in talking to reporters, Trump furiously attacked the Pope: “I’m not a fan of Pope Leo.”  He charged that the Pope was not “doing a very good job” and that “he’s a very liberal person.” He suggested that the pontiff should “stop catering to the Radical Left.” 

On X, Trump wrote: “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. We don’t like a pope who says it’s OK to have a Nuclear Weapon.”

This from a man who was convicted of 34 felonies on May 30, 2024. A New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal hush-money payments made to porn “star” Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. 

And he continued:  

“Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!

“I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States.

Head-and-shoulders shot of Trump with a serious facial expression, his right eye partly closed. He is wearing a dark blue suit, a pale blue dress shirt, a red necktie, and an American flag lapel pin. Parts of the image are slightly out of focus. The background is black.

Donald Trump

“I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do. 

“Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

Just as the majority of Nazis rallied around Adolf Hitler, so have Republicans rallied around Donald Trump.

Despite his escalating attacks on Pope Leo X1V over the pontiff’s opposition to the Iran war, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans climbed to 86%. The poll was conducted by The Economist and YouGov on April 15.