Pope Francis As Politician: Challenges Ahead In The US, Israel, Ukraine And China
(ANALYSIS) Could it possibly have been coincidence? The very day Congress certified Donald Trump’s election as the next U.S. president, the Vatican announced the transfer of San Diego’s Cardinal Robert McElroy to become the politically significant archbishop of Washington, D.C.
Whether the case with Rome’s timing, there’s no doubt Pope Francis wants the liberal McElroy (a Stanford Ph.D. in political science) to keep a keen eye on Trump’s activities these coming four years. Not to he outdone, the outgoing President Joe Biden awarded Pope Francis this past Saturday with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor.
In particular, the cardinal is poised to be U.S. Catholicism’s prime spokesman, defending migrants over against Trump’s threatened mass deportation of “undocumented” (or “illegal”) immigrants. There’s potential for major conflict. At his introductory news conference, McElroy asserted that plans for “a wider, indiscriminate, massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”
Amid the nastiness of contemporary U.S. politics, Cruxnow.com, a Catholic news website, wondered whether Trump forces might counter Catholic critics by lamenting the treatment of clergy sexual-abuse scandals by the church and, indeed, by Francis and McElroy themselves. Crux observed that unlike in former times, “the new populist leaders — who often have strong support from Mass-going Catholics — are less likely to fear offending the church leadership by bringing up the Vatican’s own skeletons.”
As Francis, who marked his 88th birthday on Dec. 17, navigates the concluding phase of his reign, he is enmeshed in politics, not just in America but globally. One pressing problem that could produce important religious reverberations beyond Francis’s lifetime has been highlighted by Crux, an essential source for those interested in Catholic developments.
Journalists perennially post lists of the past year’s top stories around New Year’s Day. Instead, Crux Editor John L. Allen Jr. annually highlights “the most under-covered Vatican stories” that merit much more attention than they’ve received. This seasoned expert stated in his Dec. 29 roundup that the No. 1 neglected story is now the “crisis in Jewish-Christian relations.”
Allen contended that “2024 was probably the most difficult year for Catholic-Jewish relations since the Vatican and Israel launched full diplomatic relations in 1993.” Perhaps for the first time in many years, he reported, experts are wondering whether the 1965 breakthrough on Jewish friendship by Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council “is forever” or subject to change.
The reason for this is interventions by Francis and the Holy See in the emotion-laden disputes over Israel’s ferocious military reaction to the 2023 Hamas terror attack from Gaza and Hezbollah’s ceaseless assaults on northern Israel from Lebanon. Allen cited four tense moments, and followed up on Jan. 5 with six more “flashpoints” that occurred over just 10 days. Such incidents are worth careful consideration.
A typical dustup involved the Pope’s Dec. 22 annual address to the Roman Curia. During impromptu remarks, he said regarding Israeli airstrikes that struck children: “This is cruelty. This is not war.” Israel’s foreign ministry quickly responded that “cruelty is terrorists hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children. Cruelty is holding 100 hostages for 442 days, including a baby and children, by terrorists and abusing them,” adding, “Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people.”
Similarly, a group of Jewish scholars implored the pope to show more balance through sympathy for Israel’s sufferings. And a late December letter chiding Francis for unhelpful and “incendiary” words came from the 53-member Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
And just this week, Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weisz, a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council of Israel, wrote a scathing open letter directed at Francis: “Your words and actions regarding the State of Israel are not merely disappointing, they represent a historic danger. Through modern communications, your voice reaches billions instantly, making your influence far greater than any pope before you. This unprecedented reach demands unprecedented responsibility, yet your statements have instead revived the darkest patterns of Catholic Church history — patterns that for centuries transformed false accusations into violence against the Jewish people.”
Weisz added, “The progress achieved under Pope John XXIII toward healing Catholic-Jewish relations is being systematically undermined by your pontificate. Through your vast digital pulpit, the church has become a global megaphone for those who weaponize antisemitism under the guise of supporting the oppressed.”
The pope’s pleas for peace and alarm over the ongoing bloodshed are inevitably troublesome when one side in a bitter conflict believes the church is unfairly supporting the opposite side. The same is the case with Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the horrendous loss of life and property that continues to result.
An interview last March was typical. Francis was asked whether peace talks would “legitimize the stronger party,” referring to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He replied that the stronger side is the one “who thinks of the people, who has the courage of the white flag, to negotiate.”
That brought this rebuke from Ukraine’s foreign minister: “The strongest is the one who, in the battle between good and evil, stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it ‘negotiations’.” The pope’s attitude was also criticized by Latvia’s president, Poland’s foreign minister and even Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who leads millions of Eastern Rite Catholics in Ukraine.
Along with preaching for peace, a diplomatic hallmark of Francis’s reign was a long-sought 2018 deal with China intended to regularize appointment of bishops and reduce tensions, which was extended for another four years last October. Francis thereby hoped to foster much-needed tolerance from the atheistic regime and perhaps lay ground for an eventual papal visit to the mainland. The renewal came just days after the Hudson Institute surveyed China’s arrests and investigations of bishops.
The Pillar, a traditionalist Catholic site, questioned whether the pope’s hopes are worth the damage inflicted upon the church’s diplomatic and moral authority. Far from basic tolerance, it protested, China’s Communist rulers persist in arrests, harassment and “disappearance” of clergy, and interfere with internal church governance. And though Francis’s deal led to mutual agreement with the regime on certain bishop appointments, others have simply been “installed by unilateral Communist Party fiat.”
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.