Pope Draws Fire From
ALLIANCE U.S. Vice President JD Vance addresses the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 14, 2025, as leaders weighed defense and transatlantic ties.
He could take his motto from Calvin
Coolidge: “The business of America is business.” If only that could work as a comprehensive guide to geopolitics. But alas, the world is not that simple. “Let them hate me, as long as they
fear me,” Caligula once said. Many Europeans would like to hate Trump but fear the consequences of an Amer- ican withdrawal from the leadership of the West. Whatever you think of this presi-
dent, we need him to succeed. Vice President JD Vance is also
a factor. A highly intelligent and thoughtful man, he wonders why the people with whom he grew up, who had to earn a living in hard-scrabble circumstances, should have to pay their tax dollars to subsidize European defense, while the Europeans prefer to spend their money on welfare. Earlier this year, Vance made his
views clear in an excellent speech at a conference in Munich. A lot of Euro- peans did not like that at all. They had better learn to lump it. More recently, the vice president
chose to spend some vacation time in the Cotswolds, a rural, picturesque part of England with beautiful, gentle, pastoral, restful countryside. In some quarters, his rest was dis-
rupted with rudeness by locals object- ing to security, which required some of their country lanes to be closed for very brief periods — a shocking way to treat a senior figure from a friendly ally. Let us hope that the likely future president does not bear a grudge.
Bruce Anderson is a London-based writer with strong links to the British Conservative Party.
He asks if Trump’s immigration policies are in line with the Catholic Church’s pro-life teachings.
P BY KATHERINE MACKENZIE
ope leo initially impressed conservative catholics after his election in May as he embraced traditions shunned by his prede- cessor Pope Francis and steered clear of hot-button social issues that divided the 1.4 billion-member church.
But his honeymoon with conservatives appears over after he unexpectedly
took aim at President Donald Trump’s immigration policies in October, ques- tioning whether they were in line with the church’s pro-life teachings. “Someone who says I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the
inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” Leo, the first U.S. pope, told reporters. Some critics, who had praised the pope for his early reserve, expressed
shock that Leo criticized Trump. Former Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland, a Francis critic who was relieved
from duty by the late pope but has praised Leo, criticized the new pope on social media for causing “much confusion . . . regarding the sanctity of human life and the moral clarity of the church’s teaching.” “So tired of papal interviews. He should return to his previous silence,”
opined the Rorate Caeli blog, which had previously criticized Francis and praised Leo. The Trump administration also pushed back. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she rejected the characterization of inhumane treatment of immigrants. While the naturally cautious Leo will look to avoid repeated clashes
with conservatives that could harden opposition to his agenda, he will not renounce his own set of values. “Is he going to ruffle the feathers of American conservatives at some
points? Yes,” said Elise Allen, author of a biography of Leo for Penguin Peru and the only journalist to interview the pope since his election. “They shouldn’t be surprised that he does that,” she told Reuters. Leo was a relative unknown on the global stage before his election in May.
He spent most of his career as a missionary in Peru, where Allen said he devel- oped a desire to care for immigrants and speak up for social causes. “He understands the priority of the abortion issue, but he’s not going to be somebody that says that’s far more important than immigration,” she said. David Gibson, a U.S. academic who follows the papacy, said conservative
Catholics had grasped at Leo’s attempts to foster unity as if he were endorsing their entire agenda. “Leo was never going to do that,” Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture, told Reuters.
NOVEMBER 2025 | NEWSMAX 57
Conservatives
VANCE/SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES /POPE/MASSIMO VALICCHIA/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
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