President Trump says his goal is to acquire Greenland, “this is not a short-term goal.”
President Donald Trump has said the goal is to acquire Greenland, not to lease it or hold it for the “short term.”
The rift between President Donald Trump and the Catholic Church leadership is reaching biblical proportions.
This week, the country’s most senior Catholic archbishops took the unusual step of issuing a joint statement condemning U.S. foreign policy, saying recent and ongoing events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland call into question “this country’s moral role in confronting evil around the world.”
Their statement on Monday came a day after Timothy P. Brolio, the U.S. military’s Catholic archbishop, told the BBC that disobeying orders that violate one’s conscience is morally justified. Referring to President Donald Trump’s threat to forcibly occupy Greenland, Broglio said he was concerned that military personnel “could be put in a situation where they would be ordered to do something morally questionable.”
The public positions taken by the church’s most senior U.S. leaders marked the latest salvo in the increasingly contentious relationship between the Catholic Church and President Trump’s administration, among the most strained Vatican-U.S. relations in the post-Vatican II era, particularly regarding foreign policy.
“There are deep rifts between moral and theological lines, especially when it comes to war, nationalism and the use of force,” said Andrew Chesnutt, a religious studies professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “What we are witnessing is not a routine policy disagreement, but a clash of worldviews, one rooted in Catholic social teaching and multilateralism, the other in transactional power politics.”
Since beginning his campaign for a second term a year ago, Mr. Trump’s policies and actions have sparked outrage in many quarters where disagreements usually don’t cause much drama. From a fired park ranger upset over being suddenly fired via email to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey telling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to “get out of town” after a 37-year-old mother of three was shot and killed by one of his employees.
But Monday’s foreign policy statement by the archbishops, all of whom are cardinals, is not only a rare case in which a U.S. Catholic leader declares the president’s policies morally disorderly, but also reflects the extent to which the church and the Trump administration’s objectives are at odds.
“This is not just a minor statement, but a major unanimous statement from all three active U.S. cardinals dissenting from President Trump’s foreign policy and his policy of using military force for partisan political and economic self-interest rather than self-defense,” said Jonathan Tan, a professor of Catholic studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Tan said the statement was in line with Pope Leo
Chesnutt said the cardinal’s statement demonstrates his belief that Catholic moral principles such as just war, human dignity and commitment to conscience are seriously threatened.
“The cardinals’ public intervention at this level suggests that they view silence as complicity and believe that pastoral responsibility now requires public resistance rather than quiet diplomacy,” he said.
Opposition to immigration policy
The Trump administration’s tightening of immigration controls has also provoked opposition from the Catholic Church. Before his death last April, Pope Francis clashed with Vice President J.D. Vance over President Trump’s mass deportation policies, and sent a letter to the U.S. bishops saying this moment was an opportunity to “reaffirm not only our faith in a God who is ever near for the incarnate, immigrants and refugees, but also the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human being.”
Pope Leo XIV, who succeeded Francis as the first North American pope, said in November that he was troubled by the United States’ treatment of immigrants.
“When people have lived a good life – many of them 10, 15, 20 years – it is alarming to treat them with such disrespect, to say the least, and with examples of violence,” the Pope said.
Most recently, Archbishop Broglio, former president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, criticized U.S. attacks on suspected drug smugglers at sea, particularly the killing of survivors of similar attacks off the coast of Venezuela.
“No one can be ordered to commit immoral acts, and even those suspected of committing crimes are entitled to due process under the law,” Broglio said in a statement last month. “Our nation has a long tradition of addressing injustice, liberating the oppressed, and ushering in a free world. We cannot tarnish that reputation with questionable actions that do not respect human dignity and the rule of law.”
US Vatican envoy sparks backlash
The ongoing friction is also evident in diplomatic relations. Earlier this month, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican sparked a backlash after a social media post downplaying Pope Leo
In a short summary posted to X on January 5, Brian Birch, the country’s ambassador to the Holy See, told his followers that the Pope is watching Venezuela’s developments closely and praying for peace. “The Pope emphasized the need to work together to build a future for the Venezuelan people based on cooperation, stability and harmony,” Birch wrote.
Critics said that was only part of the story, pointing out that the pope’s speech cited guaranteeing Venezuela’s autonomy as one of its main concerns.
Matthew Schmaltz, a religious studies professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, said the post “appears to deliberately misrepresent Leo XIV’s views, which emphasized nonviolence and sovereignty.”
Eric McDaniel, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said the post was a departure from the way previous administrations have characterized papal disagreements, often downplaying dissent but stopping short of falsely implying agreement.
“I think this is different,” McDaniel said. “In the past they (presidential administrations) have been willing to say, ‘The Pope may not support everything we do.’ But this administration will act differently than past administrations.”
Church clashes with past US presidents
Michael Pasquier, a professor of religious studies and history at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, said conflicts between the church and government are not without precedent. Catholic leaders staunchly supported an anti-communist foreign policy in the 1960s and early 1970s, but as the Vietnam War dragged on, they began to refine their position, reasserting the church’s responsibility to promote peace and human rights, he said.
Relations were further tested by the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops strongly opposed the administration’s military operations against leftist guerrillas in Central America. For example, Pasquier said Bishop John McCarthy of Houston questioned the U.S.’s arming and training of repressive Salvadoran government forces that are “clearly oppressing the people.”
By the 1980s, Pasquier said, U.S. Catholic leaders, who frequently clashed with then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig over foreign policy, no longer felt the need to prove their loyalty to the nation by “compromising their anti-communist intentions” when their theological and moral standards required them to take a stand.
“This change was manifested in the American Catholic hierarchy’s consistent calls for nuclear disarmament and demilitarization for the remaining 20 years.”th century to the present,” Pasquier said.
In the early 2000s, he said, Pope John Paul II publicly and strongly opposed President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq, arguing that “war itself is an attack on human life.” When the Pope met with President Bush at the Vatican in 2004, he asked the president on live television to end the war as soon as possible “to ensure the prompt return of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
Pasquier said the pope’s position is supported by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“At least since Vatican II and the Vietnam War, Catholic bishops in the United States have had a fairly consistent track record of publicly opposing U.S. foreign policy when it conflicts with Catholic social teaching on peace, human rights, and life,” he said.
“Enthusiasm for war is widespread”
Pope Leo’s speech to members of the Pontifical Diplomatic Corps on January 9 was tense, lamenting that diplomacy built on dialogue and consensus is “being replaced by diplomacy based on force.”
“War is back in fashion and enthusiasm for war is widespread,” he said. “…peace is being sought through arms as a condition for asserting one’s rule. This seriously threatens the rule of law, the basis of all peaceful civil coexistence.”
Monday’s statement from the U.S. archbishops reiterated that point, citing the situations in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland.
Cardinal Brace J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, said: “As pastors entrusted with the education of our people, we cannot stand by and watch as decisions are made that condemn millions of people to a life sentence that forever threatens their survival.” “Pope Leo has given us clear instructions and we must apply his teachings to the actions of our country and its leaders.”
Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, added: “Growing threats and armed conflict risk destroying international relations and plunging the world into untold suffering.”
“Our nation’s debates about the moral foundations of American policy are plagued by polarization, partisanship, and narrow economic and social interests,” their statement reads. “Pope Leo has given us the prism to take it to a higher level, and we will continue to preach, teach and advocate in the coming months to make that higher level possible.”
With Pope Leo
“This is likely to result in a prolonged period of moral friction as long as nationalism on steroids defines U.S. policy,” he said.
