For Catholics who cherished Pope Francis’s relentless defence of the dignity of migrants and minorities, the footage of his deeply awkward meeting with JD Vance on Easter Sunday made for unsettling viewing. During his 12 years in St Peter’s chair, Francis railed against Christian complicity with “America first”-type nationalist movements across the west. Here, looming over him on what turned out to be the eve of his death, was the White House embodiment of the insular, bullying politics he spent so much energy fighting against.

What now? The pope “from the ends of the earth” will be laid to rest on Saturday in an unadorned tomb in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore basilica, after a funeral attended by about 50 heads of state and 130 delegations from around the world. Progressives inside and outside the church will hope that encounter with the US vice-president was not an ominous portent.

The antipathy shown by US Catholic conservatives towards Francis has been virulent, extreme and, at times, close to schismatic. Arch-traditionalists and historic antagonists such as Donald Trump’s religious cheerleader, Cardinal Raymond Burke, will see the coming papal conclave as an opportunity to stage a full-blown counter-revolution in the Vatican. How Vance and the Maga movement’s other swaggering Catholic blowhard, Steve Bannon, would love that.

After a decade in which secular western politics has drifted steadily to the authoritarian right, could Rome now take the religious version of the same route, rolling back Franciscan reforms........

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