Source : NEW INDIAN EXPRESS NEWS
Pope Leo, meanwhile, is in some senses a politician as well, with a calm manner and the approach of talking to his fellow cardinals in small groups before the conclave, they said. Though he was born in Chicago, Leo — then Prevost — spent two decades as a missionary in Peru before being appointed by Pope Francis in 2023 to lead the Vatican’s powerful office that vets bishops around the world.
He wouldn’t be the first pope to wade into world politics. Pope John Paul II, for example, is rightly credited with helping bring down communism. But Leo enters the papacy having already criticized Vice President JD Vance, the highest-profile Catholic in American politics, on social media. Leo is at odds with the administration on such policy issues as immigration — Trump’s signature issue — and the environment.
Like Trump, Leo has turned his attention to the media.
On Monday in Vatican City, he called for the release of imprisoned journalists and affirmed the calling for “all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press.” In contrast, Trump’s approach to journalists has been combative, from the White House to the courts.
Trump and Pope Leo are in ‘different lanes’ as leaders
In early February, Leo — then still Prevost — shared an article from a Catholic publication with the headline, “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
It came days after Vance — a convert to Catholicism — discussed immigration in a Fox News interview by referencing a Christian tenet “that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.”
Leo, speaking Italian to thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square, described a different vision for the Church and human relations: “We have to be a church that works together to build bridges and to keep our arms open, like this very piazza, welcoming.”
Vance suggested the papacy is “bigger” than politics and social media. “It’s very hard to fit a 2,000-year-old institution into the politics of 2025 America,” he said during an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, adding that “it’s better for all of us if we allow the church to be about the saving of souls.”
In the rise of Trump at the same time as Leo, “the gospel meets the culture,” said Steven Millies, director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Religion and politics, he added, are misaligned because they are “oriented toward different purposes.”
“What both Francis and then Cardinal Prevost were doing was being bishops — teaching the Gospel, and reminding us the Gospel always is on the side of the poor, the afflicted, the suffering,” Millies said in an email. “That’s not Trump’s lane as a president, a reality TV star or a businessman.”
SOURCE :- NEW INDIAN EXPRESS
