On Politics: The Pope and the President

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 579 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2026

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When commenting on the power and influence of the Catholic Church, Stalin is supposed to have asked: ‘how many divisions has the pope?’ Donald Trump has yet to question how many F35s Leo XIV has, but he may as well have done in his angry response to the American pope’s criticism of the US and Israel’s attack on Iran. With the US president’s supporters invoking the Catholic theory of ‘just war’ to defend the bombing of Iran, and the claims of Silicon Valley to offer their own paths to salvation, the Church of Rome faces multiple challenges to its role as a moral and diplomatic force. To consider why the conflict between the pope and the American right has escalated so quickly in the past few weeks, James is joined by Massimo Faggioli, a professor in ecclesiology at the Loyola Institute at Trinity College Dublin, and Jack Hanson, an associate editor at the Yale Review. They also discuss the nature of papal authority and its evolution since the loss of the papal states in 1870, and whether we’re seeing the return of faith to the public sphere or simply the shattering of a consensus about what constitutes religion. Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠ From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The first ever stage adaptation of Barbara Pim's novel Quartet in Autumn will be showing at the Arcola Theatre in Dahlston from the 7th of May to the 13th of June.
0:11.4	With a script by Samantha Harvey who won the Booker Prize for her novel Orbital, Quartet in Autumn is, as Penelope Fitzgerald wrote of the book in the LRB, a deeply touching story
0:22.5	of aging, friendship and the poetry of everyday life. Book now at our cola theatre.com. Tickets start
0:30.5	from £12. How many divisions has the Pope? That, of course, is the famous rhetorical question, probably apocryphal.
0:41.3	Stalin is supposed to have uttered when urged to consider the power and influence of the Catholic Church.
0:47.3	I don't think Donald Trump has yet asked how many F-35s Pope Leo has,
0:53.3	but his extraordinary war of words against the Holy See
0:57.0	represents yet another dramatic derogation from the norms of international relations and potentially
1:03.0	a catastrophic political miscalculation. Certainly the general interest in and support for
1:09.2	Pope Leo among Catholics,
1:11.2	but even more strikingly beyond, has been pretty astonishing.
1:15.6	How did we get here?
1:17.0	Well, in the long background is the Francis papacy,
1:20.2	and more recently the consistent concern of Vatican diplomacy
1:23.2	that the force of law is being replaced by the law of force.
1:28.2	The US Secretary of War, as he likes to bill himself,
1:32.0	has declared the American War on Iran as divinely ordained and protected.
1:37.2	And it is in this context that Leo's declaration, in a sermon quoting Isaiah,
1:42.7	that God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war
1:46.3	set the acute phase of this conflict in motion.
1:50.6	Escalated by Trumpian threats of genocide and a number of internet screeds against the Pope,
1:56.3	Leo has since reiterated the church's position on peace and said that he's not interested in debating
	...

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