- The Church facing empires: a tradition of resistance
- Non possumus: when Rome says no
- Social doctrine as armor and as sword
- Gaudium et Spes revisited: the signs of the times
- The papal strategy: discretion, networking, and moral language
- An American pope speaking to Catholic America
- The Four Musketeers and Institutional Resonance
- The migration issue as a theological front line
- A pontificate against the grain: ecclesiastical and geopolitical stakes
- Internal tension within American Catholicism
- The Vatican and Ukraine: Sovereignty versus Plunder
- A normative actor in a world that brutalizes its norms
- Prophetic speech as the ultimate resource
- ✝ Biblical references
An American pope opposing an American president. History had never produced such a situation. Since May 8, 2025, the date on which Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, born in Chicago, was elected the 267th Roman pontiff under the name Leo XIV, the world has witnessed something unprecedented: a son of the United States, educated in American universities, shaped by Peruvian missions, occupying the See of Peter—and rejecting precisely what his native country seems intent on imposing on the world. Not out of anti-Americanism, he himself insists. But out of fidelity to something infinitely older than the American Republic: natural law, the dignity of the person, the multilateral order inherited from the Second World War.
This paradox is at the heart of the analysis published today by the think tank The Great Continent. Its authors, including researcher Blandine Chelini-Pont, document how Leo XIV is quietly building a strategy of normative counter-hegemony in the face of the reactionary acceleration brought about by the Trump administration. According to them, the Holy See is no longer content to be merely one moral voice among others—it is once again becoming a fully-fledged geopolitical actor, capable of mobilizing a global network of dioceses, organizations, cardinals, and faithful to oppose the "diplomacy of force" with a logic based on the sovereignty of nations and the inalienable dignity of every human being.
This is not a crusade. It is something more subtle, and perhaps more effective.
The Church facing empires: a tradition of resistance
Non possumus When Rome says no
The Latin expression Non possumus — «We cannot» — runs through the entire history of the Church like a fault line between the spiritual and the temporal. It reached its maximum symbolic force in 1870, when Pope Pius IX made it the heart of his resistance against the Kingdom of Italy, which annexed Rome and the Papal States. It reappears each time the Catholic Church judges that a secular power crosses the line of what is morally acceptable. Leo XIV follows in this tradition with remarkable strategic clarity: his refusal to yield to Trumpian logic is not a papal whim, but the reactivation of an ancient ecclesiological stance, that of an institution that knows itself to be invested with a mission transcending the calculations of the state.
It is worth recalling that it was under John Paul II, during the 1980s, that the Holy See most effectively deployed this function of normative counter-hegemony—this time against the Soviet bloc. The analysis of Great Continent He explicitly establishes this parallel: «Today, the Holy See is no longer merely a moral actor. It is once again becoming an actor of normative counter-hegemony, as it already was under John Paul II in the face of the Eastern Bloc.» The grammar is the same: a regime that seeks to impose its worldview by force, a Church that opposes it with the universality of natural law and the dignity of the person.
Social doctrine as armor and as sword
Leo XIV relied on a formidable doctrinal edifice that his predecessors had patiently built over the centuries. From the outset Rerum Novarum (1891) of Pope Leo XIII — whose pontifical name he deliberately chose — and then through Pacem in Terris by John XXIII (1963), Gaudium et Spes From the Second Vatican Council, and the social encyclicals of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church developed a coherent doctrine on human dignity, international solidarity, and subsidiarity. This body of work is not a collection of pious wishes: it is a rigorous intellectual framework that Leo XIV mobilized as a diplomatic tool.
In his address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See on January 9, 2026, the Pope articulated this vision with almost provocative clarity: denouncing the fact that «multilateralism has been replaced by a diplomacy of force,» he affirmed that peace should not be reduced to «a mere instrument of domination.» This statement, without naming Trump, directly targeted Washington’s foreign policy. Thousands of Catholic leaders around the world took this message to heart, according to the analysis of… Great Continent — proof that the Church's global network functions as a true multiplier of influence.
The apostle Paul had expressed it differently, but with the same awareness of the tension between earthly power and the higher order: «Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is.» (Romans 12:2). This is exactly what Leo XIV asks of American Catholics: not to be absorbed by the dominant logic of their time, but to judge it by the standard of a higher moral order.
Gaudium et Spes revisited: the signs of the times
Leo XIV was profoundly Augustinian — he belonged to the Order of Saint Augustine, and it was to The City of God which he used in his address to the diplomatic corps in January 2026. This reference is not insignificant. Augustine was writing at a time when Rome was collapsing, when the empire seemed to have been abandoned by God. He was then distinguishing the city of God, founded on the love of God taken to the point of self-contempt, and the city of men, founded on self-love pushed to the point of contempt for God. For the Vatican today, which observes a Trumpian America tempted by unilateralism and the excess of power, the Augustinian schema offers a powerful framework for interpretation: an empire that confuses its national interests with the universal good rushes towards its own moral ruin.
This reinterpretation is in keeping with the tradition of Gaudium et Spes, The pastoral constitution of Vatican II, which invited the Church to "scrutinize the signs of the times and interpret them in the light of the Gospel," was consistently followed by Leo XIV: he did not engage in politics in the partisan sense of the term, but he named what the Catholic faith could not remain silent about. The Pope himself expressed this during his flight to Algeria in April 2016: "The Church does not analyze foreign policy according to the category of states, but from a moral perspective centered on human dignity.".
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The papal strategy: discretion, networking, and moral language
An American pope speaking to Catholic America
The election of Robert Francis Prevost represented, in the eyes of some observers, a kind of response to the recurring problem of relations between the Holy See and American Catholics. Pope Francis, an Argentinian, was regularly accused by the American Catholic right of being "anti-American." With a pope born in Chicago, a former missionary in Peru, a polyglot, and a canon lawyer, this issue was theoretically neutralized. But history decided otherwise: in a few months, Leo XIV became, in the eyes of Catholic Trump supporters, just as exposed a target as his predecessor—or even more so, since he can no longer be reduced to the cliché of the Latin American pontiff incomprehensible to American realities.
The strategy he deployed was nonetheless more sophisticated than Francis's. Where the latter proposed a "militant pacifism" with a "Southern" interpretation of the world's turmoil, Leo XIV structured his discourse around two complementary axes: an ethical rejection of unilateral interventionism, and the demand for an international order founded on sovereignty, dignity, and just peace. In doing so, he spoke a language that conservative American Catholics could understand—that of universal natural law, that of coherence between personal faith and public action. Figures such as Cardinals Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, Robert McElroy, Archbishop of Washington, and Joseph Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, played this role of "internal conduit": by "Americanizing" the papal message, they prevented it from being labeled anti-American.
The Four Musketeers and Institutional Resonance
On January 19, 2026, in a joint statement published on their respective diocesan websites, Cardinals Cupich, McElroy, and Tobin publicly denounced the Trump administration's foreign policy. This gesture, described as "quite unprecedented" by The Cross, brilliantly illustrates the mechanics of Catholic resistance as described in the analysis of Great Continent : a Vatican declaration from January 2026 on "the diplomacy of force" turns, a few days later, into a stance taken by three of the highest American prelates on concrete subjects — the alleged annexation of Greenland, the mass deportations of migrants, the reduction of American humanitarian aid.
This chain of transmission is not spontaneous. Vatican observer Marco Politi confirmed this to Washington Post Behind these pronouncements by the American "musketeers," "a deliberate alignment with the papal diplomatic trajectory has occurred." The Holy See has once again become what it was under John Paul II: a strategic center capable of mobilizing its local networks to amplify a global message. It is this structure, more than any isolated declaration, that constitutes the true instrument of normative counter-hegemony.
The migration issue as a theological front line
No subject illustrates the confrontation between Rome and Washington better than that of migration. Leo XIV personalized it from his very first address to diplomats in May 2025, presenting himself as a «descendant of immigrants.» This papal autobiography is not a rhetorical flourish: it grounds the debate in a visceral experience, irreducible to political abstractions. And it engages the pontiff’s moral credibility in a way that no diplomatic communiqué could ever achieve.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, as a whole, has firmly opposed the mass and indiscriminate deportations carried out by the Trump administration since November 2025, denouncing «profiling, dehumanizing rhetoric, violence or aggressive tactics,» as well as detention conditions that violate «basic rights and human dignity.» In doing so, the bishops are simply applying the consistent principle that John Paul II formulated in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987): Solidarity is not a vague feeling, it is a moral virtue which concretely engages those who profess its ideal.
The Gospel of Matthew expresses this with a radicalism that social doctrine has never mitigated: «"I was a stranger, and you welcomed me."» (Matthew 25:35). This saying of Christ on the Last Judgment explicitly identifies the welcoming of migrants as an eschatological criterion—that is, as the ultimate test of faith. That Catholics could support policies of mass deportation without this saying burning on their lips: this is what Leo XIV, with his cardinals, could not leave unanswered.
A pontificate against the grain: ecclesiastical and geopolitical stakes
Internal tension within American Catholicism
The situation is theologically uncomfortable, and it would be intellectually dishonest to sidestep it. A significant portion of American Catholicism supports Donald Trump—and not just for political gain. Conservative pro-life Catholics have found in the Trump administration an administration receptive to their concerns about abortion, religious freedom, and family identity. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading figure of American hardline Catholicism, and other voices close to the movement Make America Great Again represent an ecclesiological current that deeply distrusts Pope Leo XIV, just as they distrusted Francis.
This internal tension is precisely what the Holy See is striving to defuse through education rather than condemnation. Leo XIV, notes the analysis of Great Continent, This approach addresses both "pro-life conservatives" and "social compassionates," seeking to unite in a single breath respect for unborn life and the protection of migrants' lives. This synthesis is demanding: it rejects ideological simplifications from both the left and the right. Precisely for this reason, it is uncomfortable for anyone who prefers partisan clarity to doctrinal rigor. But this is also what makes it potentially more enduring than a simple head-on confrontation.
The Vatican and Ukraine: Sovereignty versus Plunder
On December 9, 2025, Pope Leo XIV received Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was returning from an exhausting tour following the revelation of a Russian-American plan. The symbolism of this meeting was powerful: the Pope received the head of a state whose sovereignty was threatened by a logic of dividing spheres of influence among great powers—precisely what the Church's social doctrine has condemned for a century. In response, Leo XIV advocated for "a just and lasting solution, in which sovereignty and the protection of the Ukrainian people take precedence" and rejected the idea that "the concerted plundering of resources" could be a point of negotiation.
In doing so, the pontiff relies on the principle of the sovereignty of nations as reaffirmed by Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate (2009), and which John Paul II had consistently defended against all forms of imperialism, whether from the East or the West. There is a profound intellectual continuity between the Polish pope defending Poland against the Soviet Union and the American pope defending Ukraine against a Russo-American agreement that he considers contrary to international law. The lesson is simple, but powerful: national borders are not variables to be adjusted by great powers.
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Access the folder →A normative actor in a world that brutalizes its norms
The great originality of Leo XIV's strategy lies in positioning himself precisely where international norms are most under attack, in order to reaffirm them with all the more force. The Holy See refused to join the "Board of Peace" proposed by the Trump administration, deferring to the UN the primary responsibility for managing international crises. This seemingly discreet gesture is in reality of considerable significance: it signifies that the Vatican does not endorse American attempts to circumvent institutional multilateralism through bilateral power arrangements.
Theologian and researcher Blandine Chelini-Pont aptly summarizes what this stance implies: the Holy See does not act like any other state, defending its own geopolitical interests—it has no army, no extractable resources, no borders to defend. Its power is of a different order: it is normative and symbolic, based on the capacity to define what is right and to mobilize a community of 1.4 billion faithful around these pronouncements. It is precisely this power that the Trump administration sought to discredit when Donald Trump violently attacked the Pope on social media on April 12, 2026—proof, conversely, that this power is real and perceived as such in Washington.
Prophetic speech as the ultimate resource
In the Old Testament, there is a figure that transcends the centuries with a strange modernity: that of the prophet before the king. Isaiah before Ahaz, Nathan before David, Elijah before Ahab. These men have no armies. They have no treaties. They have the word—a word that disturbs precisely because it reminds the powerful that they are not the measure of all things. «"Woe to those who enact unjust laws, who draft oppressive decrees, to deny justice to the poor and deprive the humble of my people of their rights."» (Isaiah 10:1-2). This appeal from Isaiah to unjust power resonates like a breviary for anyone who wants to understand what Leo XIV is doing when he denounces mass deportations, the "Orwellian-flavored language" of American migration policies, or the reduction of humanitarian aid.
What Cardinal Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit intellectual close to the Pope, recently developed in his refutation of Peter Thiel's political theology points in the same direction: the Church rejects the project of a theology of power that would sacralize force and national hegemony. It cannot, without betraying itself, endorse a worldview in which weak nations serve as pawns in the quest for the ambitions of strong nations. It is in this sense that the pontificate of Leo XIV is, in its profound nature, less a political stance than an act of faith: the conviction that the Lord of history is not on the side of the most powerful armies, but on the side of the humblest truth.
The Catholic Church has survived the Roman, Carolingian, Habsburg, Napoleonic, and Soviet empires. It has seen them all come and go. This long institutional memory is perhaps, in the current context, its most valuable resource—and the most unsettling for those who believe that present power is eternal.
Sources
- Chelini-Pont, Blandine. The Cardinals Against Trump: Understanding Leo XIV's Strategy. The Great Continent, 2026.
- The Great Continent. Pope Leo XIV's doctrine regarding predators, January 2026.
- The Great Continent. «"I cannot": Pope Leo XIV against the Empires, September 2025.
- Politi, Marco. Interview at Washington Post, cited in The Great Continent, 2026.
- Vatican News. Leo XIV: the social doctrine of the Church promotes dialogue, May 2025.
- IRIS France. A pontificate in transition: an assessment of Leo XIV's first year, April 2026.
- John XXIII. Pacem in Terris. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1963.
- John Paul II. Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1987.
- Benedict XVI. Caritas in Veritate. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2009.
- Augustine of Hippo. The City of God. Trans. G. Combès. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959.
- Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965.
✝ Biblical references
3 passages · 3 books
He has given us a child, a son has been given to us. (Isaiah 9:5)
The great prophet of salvation: judgment, consolation and announcement of the Suffering Servant.
→ Explore the Isaiah Codex
Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:20)
The Gospel of the King: Jesus, the new Moses, fulfills the Scriptures for Israel and the nations.
→ Explore the Matthew Codex- «"The border is not sacred — only the soul is": Bishop Sipuka, the Gospel and the temptation of xenophobia
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- Where the displaced are, there is the Church: the pastoral lesson of Bishop Celso Ba Shwe
- A priest waits at the beached canoes.
The righteous will live by faith. (Romans 1:17)
Paul's great theological synthesis: sin, grace, justification, and life in the Spirit.
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