The age of Trump has its prophet: Pope Francis

The Pope has emerged as an increasingly lonely moral voice against perilous global trends like nationalism and populism.

Pope Francis has been in a Rome hospital for a month, battling double pneumonia and its complications. His condition would be serious for anyone but could be even more threatening for an 88-year-old man who had part of a lung removed as a youth and stubbornly refuses to slow down. While the Vatican reported this week that he is improving, some have speculated that he may be so weakened that he could decide to step down.

Either way, the fate of a pope remains of great concern among the world’s approximately 1.3 billion Catholics and a source of heightened curiosity for those who see Francis as an increasingly lonely moral voice on the world stage, wondering what kind of pope will eventually succeed him.

The yearning for a leader who prioritizes the needs and interests of others—especially the least powerful—is felt acutely among many Americans today who desperately seek a light inside the darkness of Donald Trump.

This pope has emerged as an increasingly solitary moral voice against perilous global trends that have at times left the forces of liberal democracy reeling: nationalism, populism, disinformation, xenophobia, economic inequality, and authoritarianism. A world without a pope like Francis may, in some ways, resemble a Hobbesian dystopia—one without both a prophet pointing to our better angels and a pragmatic idealist showing a better way.

Francis has become even more outspoken as these worrisome political trends have accelerated, especially with Mr. Trump’s electoral victory. Shortly before the onset of his current illness, Francis took direct aim at Mr. Trump’s mass deportation policy and demonization of immigrants. “What is built on the basis of force,” Francis warned in an extraordinary letter to American bishops, “and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”

The pope proclaimed his vision almost immediately after his election 12 years ago this month as the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere, the first Jesuit pope, and the first to take the name of the saint from Assisi. He traveled in the sweltering heat to the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, where so many migrants have landed—or where their boats and bodies were lost—and celebrated Mass on an altar made from the wood of refugee boats.

Francis has also consistently denounced the destructive temptation of populism and the rise of “a myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism.” On a 2021 visit to Athens, he warned against the global “retreat from democracy,” a political system he called “the response to the siren songs of authoritarianism.” Unifying world powers in a shared battle against global warming has also been a central theme of his papacy.

The pope is no starry-eyed moralist. “Reality is greater than ideas,” as he likes to say, and he is realistic about how the world works. He hates ideologies that hijack minds and values the old-fashioned politics that gets things done. Politics, he has said, “is a daily martyrdom: seeking the common good without letting yourself be corrupted.” He has told aspiring politicians that this is the true challenge of governance.

Warning against “propaganda that instills hatred, divides the world into friends to be defended and foes to be fought,” the pope has forcefully pushed for both an inclusive church and an inclusive world. Like the Gospels, Francis was an advocate of diversity, equity, and inclusion before it became a contentious issue, and he remains persuasive because he focuses on the moral core of these values—humility and mercy.

Read the pope’s remarkable address to a joint session of Congress in 2015. Francis channeled not only Catholics such as Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day but also figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. “To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place,” Francis said, adding, “We must move forward together, as one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good.”

Having a Roman pontiff as a bulwark of liberal values could, of course, be seen as ironic. Until the mid-20th century, the Catholic Church was not, at least officially, a champion of democracy, religious freedom, or other principles that Americans have traditionally viewed as foundational.

But now, we have a pope promoting many of the rights and principles that much of America seems to be turning against. “In this time of neo-imperial powers, I suspect that the Catholic Church is the best anti-empire—warts and all—that we have,” theologian Massimo Faggioli recently said.

That slim hope hinges on who will eventually succeed Francis. Some Catholics (including key players in the U.S. administration) harbor fever dreams of a “Trumpian pope” who would purge the church of liberals, gays, and anyone considered “heterodox.”

But there are no viable “papabili,” or papal candidates, in the Trump mold, and fewer political conservatives in the College of Cardinals—whose members elect the pope and have been largely appointed by Francis—than there were a few years ago. Mr. Trump’s bullying style may even provoke a backlash among the cardinals, leading to a papal successor less friendly to Trumpist populism than there might have been a year ago.

The outcome of the next conclave could well be considered a political test for Mr. Trump and his movement, much like the conclave of October 1978 sent a message to the Soviet Union. In that election, the cardinals chose Poland’s Karol Wojtyla, a 58-year-old mountain-hiking cardinal from behind the Iron Curtain, who became John Paul II. Stalin once asked, “How many divisions does the pope have?” when warned about offending the Vatican. His successors learned the answer the hard way: John Paul II helped bring down Communism.

Of course, the delineation between good and evil is less clear today. The Soviet successor is authoritarian Putinism, which does not fit neatly into an East-West paradigm. From his hospital bed, Francis recently lamented what he termed the world’s “polycrisis.” The solution, he once said, requires an “artisanal path” to a handmade peace built through the daily actions and decisions of individuals.

This is a harder route in a seemingly more complicated post-Cold War world. But as Democrats flounder in their efforts to counter Mr. Trump, they could do worse than listening to a pope who has been preaching a clear message for over a decade.