US president Donald Trump’s public criticism of Pope Leo XIV has rightly received widespread condemnation. It is a major miscalculation by a leading international figure renowned for his thin skin and ignorance of diplomacy.

When a US president verbally attacks the first-ever American pope, the world takes notice – even in this so-called secular age in the West, and in the developing world, with its millions of faithful.

Here in Northern Ireland, one observer, with the typically Ulster dark sense of humour, remarked that “Trump is not the first ‘Orangeman’ to fall out with the pope”. Trump also managed to annoy the late Dr Ian Paisley’s son Rev Kyle Paisley and Wallace Thompson, one of the former DUP leader’s close associates, by his alleged “blasphemy”.

People have been claiming that Trump has been losing the plot, but in criticising the pope so harshly, he now seems to have lost the run of himself. His behaviour is grounded not only in his erratic man-child behaviour, but also in the notion that he has been preserved by God to make America great again. This misguided concept has been strongly reinforced by the failed assassination attempts on Trump, and the unquestioning acceptance by his Maga followers that this is God’s will.

Trump administration deports elderly Irishman from US to Costa Rica under........

© The Irish Times