00:00Two Americans. One commands the most powerful military in the world.
00:03The other speaks for 1.4 billion Catholics.
00:09This is our God, Jesus, King of Peace,
00:13who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.
00:18He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,
00:23but rejects them, saying,
00:26even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.
00:31Your hands are full of blood.
00:35It's a rare public clash between the Vatican's moral authority
00:38and the White House's war logic,
00:40and it's happening as religion is being used to frame this conflict on all sides.
00:46Reverend Graham, you'd like to lay hands on him and Pastor Robert.
00:49The White House that wants the Christian vote,
00:55and the leader of the Catholic Church, an American,
00:58who believes the MAGA administration is not making the world a great place.
01:02May Almighty God continue to bless our troops in this fight.
01:06And again, to the American people, please pray for them
01:10every day on bended knee with your family,
01:15in your schools, in your churches,
01:19in the name of Jesus Christ.
01:21I think there is a discomfort and also a worry
01:25because the Vatican doesn't want to be associated
01:30in the eyes of Christians and non-Christians in the Middle East,
01:35in Asia, in Africa,
01:38with a version of Christianity which is portrayed
01:41by the White House,
01:43by the Secretary of War of Donald Trump,
01:46by some eminent members of the Republican Party in the United States.
01:52Vatican expert Massimo Fagioli from Trinity College, Dublin, says,
01:56many things make Pope Leo a worthy opponent of White House policy
02:00because Pope Leo is very much an outlier when it comes to popes.
02:04Leo is the first native English speaker since Pope Adrian IV,
02:08who reigned in 1154.
02:10He can follow world events without the need of a translator,
02:13but he was also in some ways born and bred for just this kind of fight.
02:18Pope Leo is an American Catholic who was born in a very important city
02:23for social Catholicism in the US, in Chicago.
02:26But his past, his past positions on politics,
02:31they are not liberal as we would expect.
02:36He was a registered voter for the Republican Party.
02:41The question is how can you stay a Christian
02:47and a Catholic bishop and Pope
02:49without looking on the opposite side of Donald Trump?
02:54It might seem like an odd match for a political fight,
02:57but I put it to Massimo that the fear among most political
03:01and civil leaders has left a vacuum,
03:04a void where very, very few people are willing to take on Donald Trump.
03:09And so the papacy has become, again, by default,
03:14automatically the counterweight without changing the wrong position,
03:20but America is in the hands of such an extremist political force and ideology
03:29that it's very hard not to be distanced automatically from that.
03:36I think Pope Leo is aware that there's a vacuum
03:39in terms of the opposition against the ethno-nationalist narratives.
03:45That's not just in America, but also in Europe.
03:49The entire discourse is dominated by the question of how far the right will go
03:58in conquering European countries, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, France, Germany,
04:05and there's not much talk about the alternative.
04:08And so here we are.
04:09The Pope is poking the bear in the White House.
04:12And for now, Trump and the MAGA machine are not fighting back.
04:17For such a time as this.
04:19Is Pope Leo, formerly known as Cardinal Robert Francis Provost,
04:23aware he now occupies a very, very unique position?
04:28I think he's perfectly aware that this started from the very beginning.
04:32If you remember the first few days after Leo's election in May,
04:37we had Steve Bannon saying that Travis was the worst possible choice
04:42because he was a socialist, he was a globalist, all of that.
04:47So far, Trump himself and J.D. Vance and other top officials,
04:54they have avoided, they have ignored the arguments made by the Vatican.
05:02And as to how long Pope Leo will continue to poke the bear,
05:07Massimo says he didn't leave Peru in the middle of a bloody civil war
05:10and is highly unlikely to back down from a war of words and beliefs.
05:16I don't think they should expect that.
05:18There is a tradition in the Catholic Church of popes defying the odds.
05:27John Paul II against communism is one, just an example.
05:32And so I think we should really stay tuned because it's unthinkable
05:38that this American pope might want to look like a weak pope
05:44before an American president like Donald Trump.
05:47To say they are very different characters feels like the mother
05:50of all understatements, whether you are Catholic,
05:54pro to any other god or none at all.
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