(ZENIT News – Caffe Storia / Rome, 25.08.2025).- It’s worth being clear from the outset: any comparison between the achievements of Pope Leo XIV and those of American President Donald Trump, would not only be merciless — you will say for whom –, but also inappropriate, given the difference in the roles they play. And yet, as the first hundred days of Leo XIV’s pontificate approach, it is difficult not to be led by the suggestion that the first North American Pope has arrived at a time of great crisis in the West under the leadership of the United States: a political, social, cultural, and anthropological crisis.
The same era and a common American root have given rise to trees –and, hence, to fruits — that are very different from one another, confirming the banality of any simplistic national identification. For every American that divides, there is another that unites. For every one that selects and discards, there is another that guides toward communion. One hundred days are enough to outline two divergent interpretations of the contemporary world and, consequently, also of the role of a power like the United States on the global stage.
Donald Trump, the first to surpass the three-figure mark [or one hundred], has been a big fan of himself in recent months, and it’s rarely been a good sign: he has called himself a «peacemaker» for having «stopped six wars in six months» (with little noticeable effect on any of them, so far); he has also called himself a «war hero» (along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), especially thanks to the «spectacular» military successes he attributes to himself in the brief exchange of missiles and drones between Israel and Iran. And in the economic realm, the self-proclaimed «CEO of America» claims to be doing «great things» (also through the sadomasochism of tariffs), confirming the risks of any grey area between public economic measures and private interests. In short: «Trump is right about everything,» as he himself says.
The election of Leo XIV, on the other hand, is very different: a sober, inclusive man, with a real commitment to an «unarmed and disarming» peace, just when the world has taken the opposite direction. In the Church too, Prevost has so far demonstrated that he knows how to hold together diverse and potentially divergent currents. This is evidenced by a certain return to Tradition accompanied by a personal trajectory and a cosmopolitan communicative style, as Christianity has always been. A strong identity, and therefore open and open to dialogue, attentive to the value of the Sabbath but above all to that of the human being. Without forgetting the considered initial inaction, implying reflection and waiting, a fruit both of Prevost’s temperament and of the pontificate that preceded him.
At the opposite extreme is Donald Trump’s incessant schizophrenia. The US President’s interpretation of the world is one of subtraction: the subtraction of peace to preserve interests, of resources to pay for war, of lives to provoke revenge, of exchanges to balance the deficit, of people to make room for ideologies, of communities in the name of sovereignty, of international credibility for the sake of a (supposed) electoral advantage.
On the other hand, the authentically Christian vision of Leo XIV cannot but be presented by addition: adding social commitment where there is inequality, dialogue where there is conflict, fasting where there is overabundance, roots where there is radicalism, a shared polarity instead of polarization, real presence where there is digital absence (a possible Encyclical on Artificial Intelligence and other «rerum digitalium» is expected). For the Church, it is about the fulness of God where there is the emptiness of man. «Where those responsible for State and International Institutions seem incapable of enforcing law, mediation, and dialogue, religious communities and civil society must dare to prophecy,» Leo XIV claimed in his address at the Rimini Meeting. «Let not resentment decide the future,» the Holy Father said earlier.
The long crisis of the West has common features, and only in the United States it finds its most emblematic symbol: they would like them to be obtusely impervious, at the mercy of an Administration thirsty for centralized control, willing to ignore the limits of national and international law in the name of sovereignty, security, and «America First.»
An ideological approach effective in its triviality, where the supposed common good is measured by parameters of productive and financial performance, and the means to achieve it is reduced to imposed and repressive force — a model, unfortunately. And that says a lot about our time. So much so that the recipe proposed by a vanguard American is preferred, at least for now, that of an America not «great again,» not greater, but increasingly entrenched within its old fears.
Translation of the Italian original into Spanish by ZENIT’s Editorial Director and, into English, by Virginia M. Forrester.
