After Trump’s victory, has Pope Francis become the leader of the international left?
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
November 11, 2016
The Cardinal Secretary of State, Parolin sent the Holy See’s congratulations to Donald Trump, expressing its hopes that the new president would work in service to his country and for peace in the world. Also Joseph Kurtz, Archbishop of Louisville and President of the U.S. Bishop’s Conference, congratulated the newly-elected President, urging him to govern for the common good of all citizens. The position of the Vatican diplomacy appears to be correcting, or tempering, that of Pope Francis, who has never concealed his intolerance with the candidate for the American presidency.
On his return flight from Mexico on February 18th of this year, in commenting Trump’s plan to build a wall between the United States and Mexico in order to slow down the migratory surge the Pope had said that “a person who thinks only of building walls and not bridges, is not a Christian.” On another return flight, of October 2nd from Baku to Rome, to those who asked what candidate he favoured, he didn’t commit himself. Yet, no matter how strong the reservations towards Trump can be, for a Catholic it would be difficult to imagine a position of equidistance between him and Hilary Clinton, who had officially inserted a massive implementation of abortion and the LGBT agenda into her programme. Unless self-defence against the migratory invasion is considered a graver sin than the legalization of abortion and so-called homosexual marriage.
Over and above any moral judgment on such questions, the basic problem that divides the Vatican and the new American presidency is of a political order. The theme of immigration in fact, from the very beginning of this pontificate - the basic cornerstone of Bergoglian politics - constitutes nonetheless a keystone also in Donald Trump’s programme. On this point Francis’ vision and the President of the United States’ are in opposition. “A nation without borders is not a nation, just as a country without laws is not an nation” Trump affirms, whereas for Pope Francis, an unlimited welcome to immigrants is almost a theological “locus”. If Trump goes ahead with his plan, he will not only pull the brakes on the reigning multiculturalism in his country since the Kennedy era, but he will also give inevitable impetus to those parties on the right and “those who identify with it”, which in the upcoming weeks and months, will go to elections in Austria, Holland, France and Germany.
For his part, after Clinton’s defeat, Francesco now remains the only point of reference for the international left, [now] lacking a leader. On November 5th at the conclusion of the Third World Meeting of the so-called “Popular Movements” in the Vatican, in the presence of revolutionary agitators from the five continents, Pope Francis turned to them saying: “I make your cry mine”. But the cry of protest, that is raised by the movements gathered in Paul VI’s audience hall, is, unfortunately, characterized by ideological fanaticism and incitement to violence.
The trend line is clear. In his last trip to South America, Francis expressed his sympathy for the Bolivian and Ecuadorian Presidents, and on October 24th received in private audience in the Vatican, the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro Moros, also of the extreme left, to whom he guaranteed his support. No word of approval or pleasure came instead from the Vatican for the extraordinary gesture by the Peruvian President, Pedro Paplo Kuczynski, who, on October 21st, before members of the Chamber and Senate, consecrated his country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
How fitting it would be, if in staying out of politics, the Pope and Bishops of the world would unite their efforts in religious acts of this type, beginning with the long-awaited consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, on the occasion of the 2017 Fatima centenary, which coincides with the evil one of the October Bolshevik Revolution.
Translation: Francesca Romana
