Brendan Hoban: Finding hope in Francis’ opposition to Trump                

Western People, 21.01.25

It’s a busy time. Hard to keep up with everything.

First, a new government with more of the same though garnished with some unexpected dressing in the form of that annoying little man from Kerry with the cap and yet another resurrection of Michael Lowry, despite the baggage that will forever haunt his every step.

Second, the autobiography of Francis, the pope who keeps on giving, a breaker of multiple glass ceilings in his efforts to reform what sometimes appears as an irreformable church.

And three, to cap it all, a convicted felon, one Donald Trump landing in the White House for a second term and, as a result of his election, just avoiding landing in jail.

You couldn’t make it up.

Pope Francis calls his new book, Hope, a lifelong theme, and God knows in the crazy, confused and confusing world we’re in now, we need buckets of hope. The list of outrage seems endless: Israel losing the run of itself as it levels Gaza and ensures that another version of Hamas will rise from the ashes; Trump threatening to take over Canada and the Suez Canal; Michael Healy-Rae telling the world that his primary focus is on Kerry, as if it was the Third Secret of Fatima; and 88-year-old Francis, struggling mightily to keep hope alive in a church that seems intent on avoiding the few roads open to us.

Francis writes in his new book that he was nicknamed ‘Babyface’ as a youngster because he looked younger than his years and he had a reputation for always smiling. In his middle years, he had good reason not to smile too much but, when at 76, unexpectedly he was elected pope, the smile returned – smiling to himself possibly at the strange turn his life had taken. 

That said, smiling as a form of signature music in his life has yielded Francis a rich harvest. So he smiles a lot in greeting the great and the good, but when he doesn’t the absence of the smile is instructive.

Four years ago when the Donald called to Rome to meet him for the first time Francis famously didn’t smile at all but, as the pictures attested, looked into the far distance as Trump smiled his usual fake smile. The picture could have been illustrating chalk and cheese. And it was. There was, as we say, no meeting of minds. The only thing they seem to have in common is membership of the human race.

Trump has just nominated Brian Burch as ambassador to the Holy See. A conservative Catholic activist, Burch is a constant critic of Francis. In canvassing during the recent presidential election, Burch collected personal information from Mass-goers’ mobile phones without permission and, in Trump’s words, ‘garnered more Catholic votes (for Trump) than any presidential candidate in history’. In other words, Burch’s invitations to tea at the Vatican will be few and far between.

However, one good turn deserves another. A few weeks later, Francis announced his choice as archbishop of Washington, one of the most important and sensitive appointments in the American Church. Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of San Diego, Francis decided, would occupy (on his behalf and on behalf of the Catholic Church) the centre of the American political stage.

Despite the fact that Trump and McElroy will be near neighbours, living just a stone’s throw away, there will, it is suggested, be few invitations to tea from either the resident of 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC  or Archbishop’s House down the road.

McElroy, one of the American Catholic Church’s most forceful defenders of migrants, has predictably already crossed swords with Trump in criticising Trump’s initiatives to end refugee resettlement programs and separate members of migrant families from one another and in addressing the critical questions of poverty, immigration, the environment, his attitude to the LGBT+ community – the very opposite agenda of Trump.

In his first words as archbishop-elect of Washington, McElroy implicitly criticised Trump for his ‘deeply destructive political campaign’ in the presidential election, and Trump’s policy of undermining President Obama’s political legacy – an attitude McElroy described as ‘contrary to the American tradition and against the Catholic teaching of the common good’.

The signal being sent to Trump is that McElroy will be a constant critic of Trump’s policies of climate change denial, anti-immigration and anti-the poor – unashamedly presented by Trump as pro-billionaire, deporting immigrants and boring for oil at every opportunity. (He has promised on the day he takes office – that’s yesterday – that he will repatriate thousands of immigrants and that he will encourage Americans to ‘drill, drill, drill’ for oil, regardless of the damage with climate change).

Trump’s choice of Burch as ambassador was widely interpreted as ‘antagonistic’ to Francis and as ‘aggressive’ and ‘undiplomatic’. And, Francis’ choice of McElroy as archbishop of Washington was perceived as marking Trump.

The Guardian newspaper described Trump’s threat to deport immigrants as ‘putting the US on a collision course with the Vatican’. Christopher Lamb, a longtime Vatican watcher and now with CNN, has said that McElroy is effectively making it clear to Trump that he’s going to oppose Trump’s approach to migrants and refugees and that he’s not going to be silent about it.

At a time when the media in America are one by one disgracefully capitulating to Trump, and the rich (including the owners of social media platforms) are pilgrimaging to the shrine of the God of Mar-a-lago, it’s clear that Francis and McElroy have a very different  agenda.

Francis is among the few public figures in the whole world prepared to oppose Trump’s irresponsible agenda. I must say I find that bit of steel refreshing at a time when so many want to run with the hare and hunt with the hound.