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Original article: Trump vs. León XIV, segundo round

By Lisandro Prieto Femenía, educator, writer, and philosopher

«Arrogance is the illness of the will that believes it can create a world from nothing, ignoring that power is only legitimate when it is born of plurality and recognition, not from the force of one man» (Arendt, 2005, p. 112).

The history of political philosophy can be seen as a tense chronicle of coexistence between two sovereignties that claim the entirety of human existence. On one side, we behold the Kingdom of Heaven, whose promise of transcendent justice serves as an ethical tribunal over history, reminding us that man is not the absolute master of his destiny.

On the other hand, we find the earthly principalities, represented today by nation-states that, under the banners of messianic and authoritarian leaderships, attempt to replicate a civil sacrality based on exclusion, borders, and the force of bombings.

The recent dialectical confrontation between Pope Leo XIV and Donald Trump transcends mere diplomatic disagreement and media campaign anecdotes; it is symptomatic of an ontological fracture in the understanding of what it means to govern and inhabit the world.

We are witnessing a display of arrogance that seeks to ignore the finitude of earthly power in light of that which remains immutable; a desperate attempt by the ruler to adorn his mandate with attributes of a divinity that he evidently does not possess.

This phenomenon is situated in a global context where we are witnessing the twilight of traditional diplomacy in favor of a decadent political messianism that scorns decorum and restraint. The current scenario is characterized by a degradation of public discourse where the rhetoric of hate replaces institutional dialogue.

Postmodern party messianism is nothing more than a pathology of a democracy that has lost its ethical axis, surrendering to the cult of a shabby personality, where the leader is not presented as an administrator of the common good, but as a providential figure embodying an unchallengeable and mystical will.

In this context, diplomacy—understood as the art of mediation and recognition of the other—is devoured by the urgency of violent political narcissism, transforming international relations into a battlefield of egos where tyrannical ambition recognizes neither limits nor boundaries, not even those that separate the temporal from the eternal.

In this light, the leader who self-proclaims defender of a supposedly dubious Christianity, which he himself distorts, assumes the theological guise of the «false prophet.» This figure is characterized not by an explicit denial of the sacred, but by a perverse imitation and its instrumentalization for purposes of domination.

The false prophet, as Kant warned in his analysis of religion, is one who replaces the fulfillment of ethical duties with «servile cult,» seeking divine approval to justify his own arbitrariness (Kant, 2001, p. 198).

Moreover, from a strictly theological perspective, the gravity of the false prophet transcends mere rational deviation, as it is a religious imposture described by the «Catechism of the Catholic Church» as the «deception of the Antichrist,» wherein man glorifies himself instead of God and His Incarnate Messiah (Catholic Church, 1992, n. 675).

By branding the Pontiff as a threat—as reported by international media labeling Leo XIV’s message as a «danger to Catholics»—the psychopathic ruler attempts to establish himself as the only legitimate interpreter of God’s will for his people, engaging in a blasphemous substitution where the Gospel of mercy is replaced by a dogma of global security.

Likewise, the Johannine theology presented in the Book of Revelation describes the second Beast that «had two horns like a lamb but spoke like a dragon» (Reina-Valera, 1960, Rev 13:11), an image that accurately depicts the leader who utilizes Christian symbols to justify exclusion and contempt for human dignity.

This highlights the valuable contributions left to us by Joseph Ratzinger: in his reflections on power, he emphasized that the false prophet is one who presents religion as a means for earthly success and political sovereignty, stripping it of its critical capacity against the idol of the State (Ratzinger, 2005).

By slandering the Pope, the contemporary Caesar not only incurs a diplomatic offense but also performs an act of diabolical mimicry: he pretends to speak on behalf of the faithful to lead them toward a nationalist idolatry that denies the catholicity—or universality—of the Body of Christ. This constitutes the seduction of one who employs the language of faith, not to liberate, but to bind the collective conscience to a messianic destiny that serves only his own pathetic and ephemeral glory.

The aforementioned authoritarian drift also finds argumentative reinforcement in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s analysis of «civil religion,» which held that the State needs its citizens to love their duties but warned of the danger posed by a religion that, by becoming national and exclusive, «is bad because it deceives men, makes them credulous and superstitious, and stifles the true worship of the Divinity in a vain ceremonial» (Rousseau, 2007, p. 165).

Thus, Trump’s reaction, documented in various media, claiming that the Pope «is putting many Catholics in danger,» is an exacerbated Rousseauian attempt: the sovereign cannot tolerate a spiritual loyalty that transcends the borders of his State and his particular interests.

By attacking the moral authority of the Pontiff, the pretentiously messianic leader seeks to assimilate faith to his ideology, asserting that the only valid way to be Christian is to submit to the interests of temporal power. It is the arrogance of the magistrate who, faced with the impossibility of taming real transcendence, opts to declare it a public enemy.

When the Pope denounces the existence of a handful of tyrants devastating the world, he is not making a simplistic political statement from the Vatican; rather, he activates a critical function that theology has exercised over temporal power since the days of the great Saint Augustine of Hippo.

Indeed, tyranny, analyzed rigorously philosophically, is not only the abusive exercise of military force; it is the metaphysical pretension of the sovereign to become the only measure of all things. It is also the attempt to close the horizon of humanity within the limits of his State, ignoring that intrinsic dignity of the person that has roots which no positive law or presidential decree can claim.

By reacting with vulgar hostility to this critique, the political leader reveals an excessive ambition that seeks to replace spiritual guidance with blind obedience to his own media figure. This collision lays bare the arrogance of a Caesar who, not content with administering taxes and armies, now aspires to administer faith and define what is sacred, under the guise of a supposed protection of national identity that, upon closer examination, is nothing more than a mask for collective selfishness and disdain for the most vulnerable.

Revisiting Saint Augustine, let us recall that in his fundamental work titled «The City of God,» he excellently describes the nature of kingdoms that deviate from justice in a manner that chills the blood of the contemporary reader. He questioned, what are kingdoms but great robberies if stripped of justice, for these robberies are merely small kingdoms (Augustine of Hippo, 2007, p. 147).

In this perspective, Trump’s accusation against the Pope perversely inverts this reasoning: for the nationalist leader, the danger lies not in the sovereign’s blatant injustice that segregates and persecutes but in the prophetic word that recalls the duty of universal hospitality (yes, much to the chagrin of some, Christianity is the only faith that openly prays for it).

It is the arrogance of a temporal administrator who, intoxicated by his own image and the echo of his paid followers, dares to point to the Vicar of Christ as an agent of danger. By doing so, the postmodern Caesar incurs a form of political idolatry, asserting that his will is the ultimate law and that his judgment surpasses the spiritual discernment of the one who safeguards the universal tradition of compassion.

In this «second round,» it is clear that the attack on the Pope is the ultimate assault on the diplomacy of the universal; it is the attempt of a vacuous messianism to substitute Truth (yes, with a capital T) for vocal opinion.

The dispute reaches a definitive theological dimension when we remember the words of Jesus Christ before Pilate in the Gospel according to John. By declaring, «My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I would not be delivered to the Jews» (Reina-Valera, 1960, John 18:36), Christ establishes the fundamental difference between the sovereignty that saves and the sovereignty that dominates through sword and fear.

The Kingdom of Heaven is not defended with concrete walls or with the inflamed rhetoric of social media, for its legitimacy does not arise from earthly conflict, but from a truth that the world cannot contain nor regulate. By rejecting physical struggle to avoid his delivery, Jesus discredits the logic of earthly power that post-prog leaders attempt to sanctify under the guise of «saviors» of the homeland. God’s power manifests itself in the vulnerability of the cross and in the requirement to love one’s enemy, something that is incomprehensible and dangerous for a ruler whose only grammar is domination and imposition.

Thus, Leo XIV’s declaration regarding the devastation caused by tyrants is fundamentally grounded in this distance: if the kingdom of men becomes absolute due to the arrogance of its leader, it ceases to be a servant of justice and becomes a cheap parody of the divine.

This separation of powers has one of its most powerful formulations in Pope Gelasius I’s letter to Emperor Anastasius in the year 494. It establishes the theory of the two swords, indicating that there are indeed two powers by which this world is governed: the sacred authority of the popes and royal power (Gelasius I, as cited in Hubenak, 2015, p. 4).

This foundational distinction clarifies that the ruler, however powerful he may perceive himself in his temporal mandate, must obediently submit to those who dispense divine matters concerning morality. Human power is, by definition, derived and limited, whereas God’s power is original and absolute. The current tyrannical ambition forgets this essential limit because it believes that an electoral or military triumph grants it the right to invade the domain of the sacred and admonish the Church, ignoring that its sword is iron and finite, while the word that rebukes it belongs to an order that its time in history cannot even scratch.

Alongside this final argument, Saint Thomas Aquinas emphasized this hierarchy, stating that in matters pertaining to the civil good, one must obey secular authority more than spiritual authority, but regarding the salvation of the soul and moral justice, spiritual authority should prevail (Aquinas, 2001, II-II, q. 60).

From this distinction, a consequence arises that deeply unsettles modern states imbued with totalitarian arrogance: the Pope is not obligated to provide explanations to the President of any country regarding his moral judgments about tyranny. This autonomy is the only guarantee of an ethics not consumed by the pragmatism of power.

If the Church is to be the voice of the dispossessed, its head cannot be subordinated to national security agendas or the tantrums of a ruler who uses religion merely as a tool for division. Trump’s absurd criticisms, which have led him to attack Giorgia Meloni for merely defending the dignity of the Pontiff, demonstrate that contemporary political power has fallen into an intoxication of command that tolerates no external moral authority.

Furthermore, according to data published by the New York Times, this clash has triggered a seismic shift within the Catholic electorate, where religious identity collides with loyalty to a leader who believes himself anointed to judge the divine.

As noted in the dogmatic constitution «Lumen Gentium,» the Church is a sign and instrument of the intimate union with God and the unity of the entire human race (Vatican II, 1964, p. 5). Thus, by representing that universal unity, the papal message will always pose an insurmountable obstacle for anyone whose power is based on the fracture of the human fabric.

At this point in the reflection, it becomes clear that the clash reveals an incomplete and dangerous secularization, wherein the State employs language that seeks to imitate the sacred to justify cruelty. While the political leader seeks to close the community upon itself through the cultivation of fear of the outsider, Leo XIV’s voice calls for a catholicity that breaks the logic of walls and discord.

This dispute also compels us to remember that, theologically, only God is absolute, and any claim to human absolutism is a political blasphemy. The Church’s «eschatological reserve» prevents any political system from closing itself off as an absolute totality under the command of a single man.

In this regard, Jürgen Habermas acknowledged that religious traditions preserve an expressive capacity of the human that the technical language of the liberal State sometimes exhausts (Habermas and Ratzinger, 2006). The danger emerges when political and economic ambition attempts to replace ethics with personalist mystique, transforming the administration of public affairs into a rite of exclusion where the leader dreams of being the new interpreter of divine will, forgetting that before the sovereignty of God, every emperor is but ash.

Lisandro Prieto Femenía

Bibliographic References and Sources Consulted

-Augustine of Hippo (2007). The City of God. (Trans. S. Santamarta and M. Fuertes). Madrid: Editorial Tecnos. (Original work written between 413 and 426).
-Arendt, H. (2005). The Human Condition. Buenos Aires: Paidós. (Original work published in 1958).
-Aquinas, T. de (2001). Summa Theologiae. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos. (Original work published between 1265 and 1274).
-Baja News (2024). Trump defends his position after disagreements with Pope Leo XIV. Retrieved from https://bajanews.mx
-BBC Mundo (2026). The Political Cost of Faith: Why the Clash with the Pope is Hurting Trump. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com
-Vatican II (1964). Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium. Rome: Holy See.
-Habermas, J. & Ratzinger, J. (2006). Dialectic of Secularization: On Reason and Religion. Madrid: Encuentro.
-Hubenak, F. (2015). Roots and Development of the Theory of the Two Swords. Buenos Aires: UCA Institutional Repository.
-Catholic Church (1992). Catechism of the Catholic Church. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
-Kant, I. (2001). Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason. (Trans. F. Martínez Marzoa). Madrid: Alianza Editorial. (Original work published in 1793).
-La Nación (2026). Trump’s New Attack on the Pope: «He Puts Many Catholics in Danger». Retrieved from https://www.lanacion.com.ar
-Página/12 (2026). Donald Trump Attacked Giorgia Meloni for Defending Pope Leo XIV. Retrieved from https://www.pagina12.com.ar
-Prieto Femenía, L. (2023). The Twilight of Diplomacy and Political Messianism. Pontevedra Viva. Retrieved from https://www.pontevedraviva.com
-Ratzinger, J. (2005). The Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church in the New Millennium. Madrid: Palabra.
-Reina-Valera (1960). The Holy Bible. United Bible Societies.
-Rousseau, J. J. (2007). The Social Contract. (Trans. M. Armiño). Madrid: Alianza Editorial. (Original work published in 1762).

La entrada Trump vs. Pope Leo XIV: The Ongoing Battle for Moral Sovereignty se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.