Vatican City - During the night between Sunday and Monday, Donald Trump posted a long and violent attack on Pope Leo XIV on Truth, describing him as “weak and terrible on foreign policy” and declaring that he “far prefers” the Pontiff’s brother, Louis, “because he is totally MAGA”. Within forty minutes of those words, he followed up by posting an AI-generated image in which Trump appeared in a white tunic healing a sick man, surrounded by eagles, flags and military aircraft - an image later removed after an avalanche of protests, but one that has already left its mark. A clash which, until recently, would have seemed unthinkable took shape in the extraordinarily harsh words of the President of the United States, opening an unprecedented rupture in relations between Washington and the Holy See. Leo XIV did not allow himself to be intimidated: arriving in Algiers for his trip to Africa, he responded firmly: “I am not afraid of him” and “I do not want to open a debate”. “I am not a politician: let us stop the wars!”
The more developed and theologically sharper response, however, came from Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a statement given to kath.net.
“No Avignon, no antipope”
The German cardinal began by forcefully reaffirming the legitimacy and freedom of the papal election: the cardinals, he wrote, elected their brother “in full freedom, and solely in the awareness of their responsibility before God”. A choice which, according to Müller, belongs not to men but to God Himself. And to that choice the cardinals responded with a solemn promise of obedience, up to - he was keen to stress - “the sacrifice of our very lives”. His response to the rumours circulating in recent days in circles close to the White House about a possible “new Avignon” - that is, an attempt to isolate or delegitimise the Roman papacy by subjecting it to political pressure - was unequivocal: “There will be no new Avignon, of which people have spoken in a threatening tone.” Even more uncompromising was his condemnation of anyone seeking to exploit the crisis in a schismatic direction: “Anyone who is raised up by some powerful figure as an antipope, or allows himself to be made one, is a reprehensible traitor to the work of Christ.” Words of immense weight.
The historical responsibility of the United States
The German cardinal did not, however, confine himself to defending the Pope. He developed a geopolitical argument of considerable depth, acknowledging without ambiguity the role the United States has exercised - and must exercise - in the world: “a democracy, founded on fundamental human rights”, endowed with “a particular historical responsibility for the peace, freedom and wellbeing of humanity”. America’s role in the “containment of dangerous regimes and dictatorships deadly for the whole world”, he wrote, “cannot be denied”. But that historical greatness, according to Müller, also carries a moral obligation. International law - he recalled, invoking the School of Salamanca and the Thomistic tradition - “does not exist to protect tyrants and conquerors, but peoples”. And appeasement, as the history of the twentieth century has shown, does not pay: “The policy of appeasement towards Hitler proved catastrophic and presented its bitter bill in the Second World War.”
Iran, nuclear weapons and the moral dilemma of war
On one of the most delicate points in the clash between Trump and Leo XIV - the war in Iran and the nuclear threat - Müller set out a position that is neither absolute pacifism nor a blessing of weapons. The Iranian regime must be “shown to the whole world as an abuse of religion”; the destruction of the nuclear capability of dictatorial states “is not morally illegitimate and may even be historically necessary”. And yet, he added, “there are no clean wars”: anyone acting on the political and military plane “always incurs guilt”, because the end does not justify the means. It is a moral subtlety entirely absent from the American political debate - and from Trump’s tone on Truth.
“No one has the right to criticise the Pope”
The concluding point of Müller’s statement is the most direct: “It must be said clearly that no one has the right to criticise the Pope when he faithfully follows the mandate he received from Christ: to bear witness to the Gospel of peace.” The evangelical message, he concluded, “stands above the interests of politics, and God is our judge”. And no powerful man - not even the most powerful in the world - may “instrumentalise the name of God for his own interests”. Leo XIV, Müller recalled as he closed on a note of hope, opened his pontificate with the biblical greeting that has echoed for two thousand years: “Peace be with you!” That is where we must begin again. Not from Truth Social.
fr.L.C.
Silere non possum