Published at 20:05 on 17 April 2026
Trump is ending up on the wrong side of the Catholic Church hierarchy. Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, has issued multiple thinly-veiled criticisms of the Trump Regime’s policies, and Trump is increasingly unhappy (and vocally so) about it.
In the last 50 years, the track record of regimes that ended up prominently on the Vatican’s wrong side is, let us say, not precisely great. Most famously, of course, is the Soviet regime and its system of satellite states in eastern and central Europe. It all started with the emergence of Solidarność within about a year of the new Pope’s return visit to his homeland.
Pope John Paul II (and the Catholic Church in general) are cast in the popular view as figures of the Right for their role in undermining a nominally socialist system, and for their traditionalist views on the role and rights of women, the family, and homosexuality. It’s not so simple. Yes, those views exist, no doubt about it.
But Catholic social teaching has also long been critical of unbridled free-market capitalism. This goes way back. Literally back to Jesus Christ. The Gospels are full of messages of sympathy for the poor, the foreigner, and the less fortunate in general. That same “conservative” John Paul II wrote the following as a young cleric:
Necessarily demands brotherhood from people, without which the communal possession of goods seems impossible. This brotherhood is nothing else but the Christian idea of social love. Thus, in this way, the ideal of social love as the zenith of Christian ethical teaching converges with the communist ideal at its peak, when it comes to the realization of this ideal in the area of possessing material goods by people. Because of that when choosing between ideals, the Church must choose the communist ideal over the principle of private property.
And later, as pope:
Catholic social doctrine is not a surrogate for capitalism. In fact, although decisively condemning “socialism,” the church, since Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, has always distanced itself from capitalistic ideology, holding it responsible for grave social injustices. In Quadragesimo Anno Pius XI, for his part, used clear and strong words to stigmatize the international imperialism of money.
The latter quote, by the way, was spoken in Soviet-occupied Latvia in 1993. Even when criticizing the Soviet empire, John Paul II was careful to distance himself from capitalist orthodoxy.
I am old enough that I was alive and becoming increasingly politically aware when that was happening, and remember how incensed talking heads in the US media generally were when the Pope had the temerity to criticize capitalism. It was one of the things that made me realize the mass media were not nearly so free and impartial as I was told they were. But I digress.
It is not just the brutality of left-wing authoritarianism that John Paul II tangled with, either. He, and local bishops and cardinals, also played key roles in undermining both the Pinochet and Marcos dictatorships. Cardinal Jaime Lachica Sin is in fact widely regarded as one of the leaders of the revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.
Of particular importance is that all these regimes fell, and in relatively short order (it didn’t take multiple decades).
My point here is not to gloss over or deny the conservative aspects of Catholic teaching. Those exist and are very real. My point is that Catholic teaching is more than just that. It aligns neatly with neither the political Right nor the political Left in the modern context. It is the result of a two-millennia old faith tradition, and an organization that sees itself as the custodian of that tradition, and not a creature of current sentiments.
I would also have to say that the Catholic Church’s less than stellar record in dealing with 20th century fascism (and remorse over the same) probably has something to do with it. It started with the Holy See signing the Lateran Treaty with the Mussolini regime. That particular treaty resolved a lot of ambiguity about the role of the pope in modern Europe (it created the Vatican City as an independent microstate), and is widely regarded as one of Mussolini’s few good accomplishments. Because of how well collaborating with the fascist regime in Italy turned out, the Vatican then chose to cut a deal with the fascist regime in Germany. The icing on the cake was Vatican’s complicity in setting up the ratlines that helped many Nazi war criminals escape justice.
It is thus reasonable to suspect that guilt for past misdeeds is part of the current willingness to criticize authoritarianism. Ultimately, though, that is a moot point. However that willingness emerged, it is there, it is deep-seated, and it has a past track record of success.
In this light, I suggest that the current spat between the Trump Regime and the Catholic Church is probably a good sign that the days of the former are in all likelihood limited.
