Terry Glavin: The Pope vs. Trump saga is a propaganda boon for Iran

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After Trump issued a broadside against him Tuesday night, calling him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy,” Pope Leo said: “I do not look at my role as being political, a politician.” He said it was never his intention to get into a debate with Trump. However, “I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing.”

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This was clearly a reference to the bloodcurdling rhetoric favoured by Trump’s Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who has invoked “God’s almighty providence” in aid of the American war effort. Hegseth has summoned Americans to pray for victory in the Middle East conflict “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

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In a stirring address to thousands of the faithful at St Peter’s Basilica last Saturday, the pope lamented: “Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death.”

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It hasn’t helped that Hegseth’s church is affiliated with an Idaho-based evangelical congregation led by Doug Wilson, a Calvinist cleric who preaches that single women should be denied the right to vote and public displays of Catholic piety should be banned. A recrudescence of antisemitism and anti-Catholic bigotry has been percolating at the fringes of Trump’s White House, and even the more prominent Catholics in the MAGA movement are recent converts who have found themselves at odds with the Vatican.

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On Tuesday night, Vice-President J.D. Vance, who was accepted into the Catholic Church only seven years ago, was heckled at a conservative event at the University of Georgia by opponents of the Iran war. Defending his anti-war credentials, Vance said that denying Ukraine the funds to defend itself against Russia’s invasion was “one of the things I’m proudest we’ve done in this administration.”

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Vance said the pope should mind his own business and stay out of American politics. The trouble is, while Pope Leo may be as uninterested in politics as he claims to be, American politics is exceedingly interested in Pope Leo.

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If he is as great a moral authority on the global scene as his supporters claim, and since he consistently argues for dialogue over confrontation, and he’s captured the attention of the most senior political and clerical figures in the Khomeinist dictatorship, he might try to make some use of himself on behalf of the persecuted people of Iran. Especially Iran’s minorities.

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Iran’s Baha’i community is currently besieged. After every democratic upheaval in Iran, the regime always goes looking for scapegoats. And after last December’s protests, when the regime gunned down perhaps 30,000 people, the Baha’i are once again being singled out for persecution, even though the Baha’i custom is to avoid involvement in protests completely.

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Peyvand Naeimi, for instance. Arrested Jan. 8 and held in solitary confinement, the 30-year-old Peyvand has been subjected to severe torture, electric shocks and mock hangings, all in aid of extracting a false confession from him. His cousin, Borna, 29, was arrested March 1, and was forced to sign a false confession in the murder of three members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

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Perhaps it would be too close for diplomatic comfort, protesting too loudly about the Christians who are routinely rounded up by the IRGC and accused of being Mossad agents.

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A word on behalf of Peyvand and Borna, then. Would that be too much trouble?

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National Post

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