RECENT events have given a new twist to history. A Chicago-born pontiff from Rome has publicly rebuked an American Christian crusader.

Normally, popes issue insipid encyclicals or harmless homilies. In 1968, for example, Pope Paul VI issued Of Human Life — a justification of the Catholic church’s opposition to methods of birth control. (One sceptic wondered how a celibate bachelor felt qualified to guide married couples on such an intimate matter.)

Previous popes chose not to interfere even when human rights were being violated. In the 1940s, Pope Pius XII refrained from any condemnation of the Nazis or Stalin’s pogroms. Hitler let Mussolini handle the Vatican. Stalin silenced the pope with the cutting question: “How many divisions has the Pope?”

This Easter, Pope Leo XIV felt impelled to speak out against a fellow countryman — the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth — who had appealed to “Almighty God who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle” (Psalm 144). On Palm Sunday, Pope Leo XIV, in the name of the same God and quoting from the same Holy Bible, reproached Hegseth: “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many........

© Dawn