Yesterday’s Guardian reported that our Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, has said she is standing four square with Pope Leo in his call for peace, which has resulted in a rather public dispute with President Trump.
In response to the Pope’s warning on Thursday that the world was being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants”, she made her position crystal clear: “I stand with my brother in Christ, his holiness Pope Leo XIV, in his courageous call for a kingdom of peace. As innocent people are killed and displaced, families torn apart and futures destroyed, the human cost of war is incalculable”. The Archbishop went on: “We must also urge all those entrusted with political authority to pursue every possible peaceful and just means of resolving conflict.”
Read the Guardian article here.
Thursday’s comments followed an earlier attack on the Pope by President Trump in a lengthy social media post calling him, “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy”. He also suggested the Holy Father only got his position as Pope, “because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J Trump”.
Matters were made considerably worse by the President posting an image of himself (click here) as Christ raising someone from the dead. It was unclear who the someone was supposed to be: some thought Lazarus while others thought the figure looked more like Jeffrey Epstein! Needless to say, the President faced considerable criticism over the image and in fact removed it some hours later. When asked what was behind it, Mr Trump insisted: “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor making people better…… And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.”
Much of the criticism of the image came from faith-based news outlets. “This goes too far. It crosses the line,” wrote David Brody, a journalist with the Christian Broadcasting Network. But criticism also came from Republicans and Trump-supporters. Trump ally, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, said the remarks were “unacceptable”. “The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal for him to call for peace and to condemn every form of war,” Meloni said.
There is a lot in this story for us as a church to think about. But fundamentally this is the latest chapter in a very long story – as long as humanity has existed – of human arrogance, particularly, though not exclusively, by those with power. When in Cameroon, Pope Leo criticised leaders who spend billions on wars and said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants”, he was making a theological point, namely about tyrants acting as if the call of a common humanity did not relate to them, that they were somehow above the bounds that our common creation by a loving God places upon us all. In the same vein, he criticised leaders who “turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found”. “Peace is not something we must invent: it is something we must embrace by accepting our neighbour as a brother and as our sister,” the Pope said.