The Trump White House has ruptured many of its relationships with a chaotic and illegal attack on Iran, but one of the most intriguing has been its break with the Vatican. Pope Leo has taken a public stance against the war, earning him a reproach – and a lecture on theology – from US vice-president JD Vance and persistent criticism from Donald Trump himself, who accused the first American pope of being, among other things, “weak on crime”. Trump recently posted images portraying himself as Christ.
Behind the petty insults of recent weeks, however, is the wider story of how American Catholicism, driven by converts such as Vance, has been moving down a more conservative path. In her excellent piece on the trend this weekend, Europe Correspondent Naomi O’Leary describes how those same traditionalists have exerted an important intellectual influence on the Maga movement seeking to reshape the US. Converts, many with conservative views, have taken influential positions in US universities, Catholic journals and magazines, while surveys shows that American priests are much more likely to describe themselves as theologically conservative than in the late 20th century.
“The election of Leo as the first US-born pope raised hopes among conservative Catholics of a like-minded pontiff,” O’Leary writes. “His papacy began with Leo contacting alienated parts of the church, while subtly signalling continuity and tradition with a cautious manner of speech that seemed to herald reconciliation after a divisive period.
“But Leo’s reputation as ‘the quiet American’ has been entirely overturned by his emphatic opposition to the US attack on Iran in a series of sermons, writings and comments to media since March.”
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Leo’s steadfast opposition to the Iran war prompts columnist Mark O’Connell to suggest that the pope is the only global leader “who seems to be thinking and speaking from a place of moral seriousness about our current impasse.” His admiration for the pope is down to more than his position on Iran, O’Connell explains, citing his interventions on artificial intelligence and Israel’s attacks on Lebanon as well as his consistent defence “of human dignity against the depravity of contemporary capitalism.”
“The pope, infallible though he may be according to Catholic dogma (and how jealous must Trump be of that one!), doesn’t have to be right about everything to be welcomed as a lone voice of decency and humanity in a time of barbarism, greed and all-consuming cynicism. And you don’t have to darken the door of a church or believe in anything other than human dignity to recognise the value in that voice.”
Relations between Church and State, specifically between the president of Ireland and Catholic citizens, is a theme of Breda O’Brien’s column in the same section. O’Brien recalls that in 1993, then president Mary Robinson invited her and other anti-abortion women to Áras an Uachtaráin and engaged in friendly, good-faith discussion with this group whose views were very different from her own. She draws a contrast between that gesture, as well as inclusive moves by Mary McAleese when she assumed the presidency, with the early hints of President Catherine Connolly’s approach to her role.
“Every president has political agendas, going right back to Douglas Hyde being selected not just for his love of the Irish language but as a gesture of inclusivity to the Protestant community,” O’Brien writes. “A wise and successful president rises above those agendas to be president for all.”
On an adjacent theme, our editorial wonders about the value – at least as it is currently constituted – of the Council of State, which met this week to advise the president on whether to refer the International Protection Bill to the Supreme Court (she didn’t).
Elsewhere in Opinion, the novelist Sally Rooney writes that the fragility of our fuel supply, as exposed by the crisis in the Middle East, makes the argument for rationing fuel according to need; while columnist Sinéad O’Sullivan suggest that Ireland got rich and then performed the historic failure of blowing it.
“Ireland has more money than it has ever had, which is sadly the problem, not the solution,” she writes. “Ireland has not built a society, it has built a tax jurisdiction. And until there is a broader understanding of the difference, every crisis will look like the last one: a State with money but no policy tools, tax revenue but no resilience, and a population told it has never been richer while it has never felt poorer.”
One of the most obvious reasons for that gap between abstract national wealth and the public’s sense of it is the housing crisis. In the week that the Government cleared a path to more widespread use of “modular homes” in people’s gardens – “beds in sheds”, as critics call them – Ellen O’Riordan reports on fears that looser planning rules will need to shoddier housing.
The fallout from Ireland’s recent fuel blockades continues to shape the political discussion, having already cost the ruling coalition a junior minister and revealed fissures within the opposition. Could the protests enable Independent Ireland – a conservative outfit with four TDs, an MEP and 24 councillors – to make a breakthrough, asks Jack Horgan-Jones. The protests have also presented dilemmas for Sinn Féin, as Freya McClements points out in her look at the key issues facing the party on its ardfheis weekend. The party needs to perform strongly in the Dublin central byelection – one of two that take place next month – but, as our leader observes, it is far from guaranteed to win in the constituency of its leader, Mary Lou McDonald. In his analysis, Pat Leahy wonders whether Sinn Féin is any closer to achieving its objectives than it was a decade ago.
The Iran war is wreaking havoc in the travel industry. Would you be better off staying in Ireland this summer, asks Conor Pope.
In Business, Mark Tighe has an account of an extraordinarily bitter legal dispute between the branch manager of Specsavers in Ennis, Co Clare, and the Guernsey-based optician chain.
Lara Marlowe is reporting for The Irish Times this week from Ukraine, which has been marking the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Decades after the reactor explosion, she writes, Ukrainian children and undergoing life-saving surgery for radiation-linked heart defects.
Also in our World section, Keith Duggan reflects on the break between Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, the TV controversialist who did so much to get him elected.
There are some strong interviews in Life & Style this weekend with the former rugby player Paul O’Connell, Masterchef’s Anna Haugh and the actor Carrie Crowley.
Former taoiseach Leo Varadkar made news this week with his suggestion that urban Ireland pays the bills while farmers receive their subsidies. It went down badly in Leitrim, among other places. In his Overheard column, Karl McDonald recalls a more fundamental issue raised by Varadkar himself as a young politician: does Leitrim even exist?
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
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