Moral bankruptcy in the Vatican.
The Pope has abandoned his own church's "just war" doctrine.
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This is an expanded version of my column in today’s Times (£).
If the purpose of trolling — the deliberate posting of offensive or inflammatory messages on social media — is to produce an overreaction, Donald Trump is a grandmaster of the genre.
He lashed out at Pope Leo XIV for opposing the Iran war. “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon” he wrote on Truth Social. “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”.
Shortly afterwards he reposted an AI generated image depicting himself with a light emanating from his person laying his hand on the forehead of a prone figure in a hospital bed.
This produced outraged claims that he was portraying himself as Jesus. Since his AI self was dressed in indeterminate red and white robes and was surrounded by an American flag, the Statue of Liberty, eagles and jet fighters, this was perhaps just a bit of pagan kitsch depicting Trump healing the world through the exercise of American power. While healing the sick through the laying on of hands has obvious biblical allusions, it’s also associated with various New Age practices.
This didn’t prevent a near-hysterical clamour that Trump was clearly a blasphemous megalomaniac and had now lost the Christian vote.
Many Christians were indeed deeply offended and upset. Doubtless aware that this time he’d gone too far because he’d upset a significant proportion of his own political base, Trump subsequently deleted the image from his Truth Social site, claiming implausibly that he had believed he was represented in it as a doctor from the Red Cross.
The furore over the image detracted from his words about the Pope. Stripping aside Trump’s boastful and bombastic ramblings, his core point was justified. The Pope’s attitude to the Iran war is indeed shocking...
