President Donald Trump was octagon-side at a bloody Ultimate Fighting Championship in Miami even as Vice President JD Vance was announcing in Pakistan that negotiations with Iran had collapsed, but there was another, globally significant event that same day. It was also the time of pope Leo XIV’s worldwide vigil for peace at a precarious time.

The juxtaposition brought to mind a dismissive remark that Stalin of the Soviet Union is said to have made during World War II, in the time of Pope Pius XII.

“The Pope? How many divisions has he got?” the dictator said, by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s account.

Trump would have an easier time with the current pontiff if it were a military contest that could be resolved by having “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth deliver more unrelenting death from above, in his words, “no quarter, no mercy.”

But in Pope Leo, our president faces someone of actual faith who deploys direct, simple sentences that get to the heart of an issue. The very simplicity of his unadorned words during Saturday’s Peace Vigil amidst the splendor of Saint Peter’s Basilica gave them all the more power.

“Nothing can confine us to a predetermined fate, not even in this world where there never seem to be enough graves, for people continue to crucify one another and eliminate life, with no regard to justice and mercy,” he said.

Trump subsequently attacked the pope on Truth Social as if he were just a political opponent, saying he is “WEAK on crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” Trump, 79, called on the Vicar of Christ to “stop catering to the radical left.”

“I........

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