IT is Easter Sunday in Florence, and like thousands of others I’m walking towards the Duomo – that great whited sepulchre topped by Brunelleschi’s magnificent dome.

If anything symbolises Florence and its High Renaissance glories, this is it.

But as I’d discovered the day before – after a sweltering hour-long wait in the queue – inside the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore has been stripped of its finery. It’s in a museum nearby.

Lesson one: don’t waste time queuing. The Duomo’s beauty is all on the outside.

Brunelleschi is buried there, and I said a prayer at his tomb. But what indignity – his unassuming grave is beside the shop selling rosary beads, postcards, and trinkets shipped in from China.

Anyway, back to Easter Sunday and a 17th century ritual all so resonant with the 21st.

At 11am, Florentines celebrate Easter with the Scoppio del Carro – explosion of the cart.

They’ve been doing it since the Medicis subverted Florence’s republic and seized power in much the way as Trump is doing now to the USA: undermining democracy; deploying thuggery to control the masses; corrupting the judiciary; the usual strong-arm stuff. They even started wars to distract attention from what they were up to.

Scoppio del carro is one of those traditions that doesn’t bear close analysis.

At about 10am, a priest lights the Easter candle from sparks produced by flints brought from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. They were battle trophies for a knight who fought in the first Crusade in 1099. The Crusades still shame the Church today.

The flame lights coals which are placed in the cart and processed to the Duomo, where the archbishop is waiting. As the Gloria reverberates, the archbishop takes the ‘holy fire’ and lights a dove-shaped rocket representing the Holy Spirit.

It flies down a wire from the high altar, hits the cart and sets off a 10-minute firework display to the delight of the crowd, which this year included me channelling my inner Florentine.

A good explosion secures good luck for the city and the harvest to come. It is a pagan ritual repurposed by the Church.

But in the midst of this year of war, the quaint ceremony seems at odds with the needs of our time.

In the Middle East the United States is fighting a new Crusade, with its blood-thirsty Secretary for War Pete Hegseth openly invoking the “name of Jesus Christ” to justify war crimes, and Trump issuing memes showing himself as the Messiah.

Hegseth, with his Crusade tattoos (Deus Vult – ‘God Wills It’ - is inked on his arm), sees himself as a new warrior for Christ in the battle against Islam.

Calvinist belief in predestination underscores the Christian right’s conviction that God is on their side and the creator is the motivating force for everything that happens – even the massacre of 175 people, mostly children, in the Tomahawk bombing of a school at the start of the war on Iran.

This mindset is a perversion of Christianity – and was condemned by Pope Leo over Easter as he advanced the cause of peace, saying God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war”. Leo then ramped the criticism: “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

Now approaching his first year in office, the Pope seems to be finding his voice. Perhaps he’s decided Trump is no longer worth humouring.

His message has clearly hit home. On Sunday, Trump unleashed his fury. “Pope Leo is WEAK on crime, and terrible for foreign policy,” the president said on social media, adding: “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

The Financial Times last week reported that US officials had threatened the Papal Nuncio over the Vatican’s refusal to back Trump’s militarism. Evoking the 14th century schism which saw an antipope installed in Avignon by the French, the reference “was read as an implicit threat that Washington could set up a rival pope in opposition to Leo if the Chicago-born Catholic leader did not more closely toe Washington’s line”.

No doubt Cardinal Raymond Burke was being lined up for a white cassock and an office in the West Wing.

On election, the first Medici Pope, Leo X, said: “God has given us the papacy, let’s enjoy it.” And he did. His corruption hastened the Reformation.

Even with a new tennis court and gym in the Vatican, this war-time Pope Leo has little to enjoy. And life has just got tougher.

But Trump’s full-frontal assault shows he sees this first American Pope as a threat. Leo needs to keep up the criticism. The Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways – the dove-rocket has found its moment.

© The Irish News