Donald Trump’s latest clash with Pope Leo is not merely an argument with the Vatican. It is a revealing struggle over whether religion will remain a moral restraint on power, or be turned into a language of vanity, menace and self-consecration. There are moments in public life when the most troubling thing is not what a leader says, but the moral universe in which he seems to believe he speaks. Trump’s attack on Leo belongs to that category. After the Pope criticised Trump’s rhetoric, he lashed out, calling Leo “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy”. The trigger was Trump’s appalling language on Iran. He declared: “A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Leo’s response was morally exact: “This is truly unacceptable.”

Yet the deeper issue lies in the growing temptation, within........

© Indian Express