The 45th and soon-to-be 47th president made over a dozen announcements within 10 days of his electoral victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. Many of his Cabinet nominees and other administration official picks have yet to be announced.

Among the Catholics Trump has chosen for his Cabinet are Kennedy, who was nominated to be the secretary of Health and Human Services; Rubio as secretary of state; Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations; John Ratcliffe, nominated as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); and Duffy for secretary of transportation.

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Despite vastly outspending her opponent and drafting a galaxy of celebrities to her cause - Jennifer Lopez, Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Martin, Taylor Swift - Democratic candidate Kamala Harris lost the Electoral College, the popular vote and all the swing states.

This has bewildered and dismayed liberals - and much of the mainstream media. In the aftermath, progressive Senator Bernie Sanders excoriated the Democratic Party machine.

"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," he said.

He continued: "Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.

Harris ran a campaign straight out of the centrist political playbook. Sanders observed that the 60% of Americans who live pay cheque to pay cheque weren't convinced by it.

She sought to dampen social divisions rather than accentuate them. She spoke of harmony, kindness and future prosperity, of middle-class aspiration rather than poverty and suffering. Her speeches often repeated rhetoric like her promise to be "laser-focused on creating opportunities for the middle class".

This was unlikely to endear her to those for whom social mobility appears impossible.

Words of blood and thunder resonated

Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, refuted Sanders' claims, saying:

"[Joe] Biden was the most pro-worker president of my lifetime - saved union pensions, created millions of good paying jobs and even marched in a picket line."

But did those workers feel like the Democrats were speaking to them? And did they like what they heard?

Class politics needs to not only promise to redistribute wealth, but do so in a language that chimes with people's lived experience - more effectively than Trump's right-wing populism.

Harris's genial, smiling optimism failed to strike a chord with voters hurting from years of inflation and declining real wages.

And her use of celebrity advocates echoes writer Jeff Sparrow's criticism of the left as "too often infatuated with the symbolic power of celebrity gestures" after Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential election loss.

By contrast, Trump's words of blood and thunder hit the spot - not only in his rural and outer suburban strongholds, but among those voters in rust-belt inner cities, who had voted decisively for Biden four years earlier.

The greatest threat to America, he said, was from "the enemy from within". He defined them as: "All the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country; that's a bigger enemy than China and Russia."

Harris's attempt to build her campaign around social movements of gender and race failed abjectly.

In particular, the appeal to women on reproductive rights, and to minority voters by preaching racial harmony resonated less than Trump's emphasis on law and order and border control.

Women voted more strongly for Harris than for Trump, but not in sufficient numbers to get her into the Oval Office. Latinos flocked to Trump despite his promises to deport undocumented immigrants.

This shows it takes more than political rhetoric to bake people into voting blocs.

Those of us who fixate on politics and the news media tend to overread the ability of public debate to set political agendas, especially during election campaigns.

In fact, few voters pay much attention to politics. They rarely watch, listen to or read mainstream media and have little political content in their social media news feeds. Exit polls indicate Trump led with these kinds of voters.

Is populism the new class?

In much of the Western world, class has receded from the political vocabulary. As manufacturing industries declined, so did the old trade unions whose base was among blue-collar workers.

In 1983, 20.1 percent of Americans were union members. In 2023, membership had halved to 10%. Few of those in service jobs join unions, largely because many are precariously employed.

These days, politicians in the old social democratic parties, like the Democrats in the US and Labor here in Australia, are much more likely to have come up through law and business than the union movement.

In the US, ex-teacher Tim Walz was the first candidate on a Democratic Party presidential ticket without law school experience since Jimmy Carter.

The language of populism - the people versus the elites - is a smokescreen that obscures real structures of power and inequality. But it comes much more easily to the lips of Americans than that of class.

Trump's political cunning rests in his ability to identify as one of the people, even to paint the left as the enemy of disenfranchised so-called patriots.

"We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," he told a Veteran's Day rally last year.

He conjures up (an illusory) golden age of prosperity in a once-great monocultural America, where jobs were protected by tariffs and crime was low, helped by the reality of rising cost of living and falling real wages.

There is plenty of room on this nostalgic landscape for Mister Moneybags, an old-fashioned tycoon, even one with the "morals of an alley cat", as Joe Biden said in the debate that finished his 2024 candidacy.

The elite, by contrast, are faceless: politicians, bureaucrats, the "laptop class", as Elon Musk calls knowledge workers, and the grey cardinals of the "deep state" (a conspiratorial term for the American federal bureaucracy).

According to Trump's narrative, they conspire in the shadows to rob decent, hardworking folk of their livelihoods. This accords with a real geographical divide: people in cities with high incomes and valuable real estate, and those in the rust-belt with neither.

Australian populism

In Australia, the language of populism has deeper roots than that of class. Students of Australian history learn that national identity was based on distinguishing ourselves from the crusty traditions of the motherland: the belief that, as historian Russel Ward wrote, all Australians should be treated equally, that "Jack is as not only as good as his master … but probably a good deal better".

The Australian Labor Party was there when this egalitarian myth was born. But as the gap between rich and poor grows here, as elsewhere, it has become less plausible than once it was.

It remains to be seen whether Anthony Albanese - whose life journey has taken him from social housing to waterfront mansion - is prepared to bring the sharp elbows of class politics, in both policy and language, to next year's election campaign.

The experience of Kamala Harris suggests he would be well advised to do so.

• First published in The Conversation
• George H Morgan is Associate Professor Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

Leaders of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) emphasised that they would champion vulnerable communities and work towards immigration reform.

"As the successors of the Apostles and vicars of Christ in our dioceses, we never backpedal or renounce the clear teaching of the Gospel" said Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the conference. "We proclaim it in and out of season."

Commitment to human dignity

Broglio, who also leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, said that Catholic teachings on human dignity encompass all stages of life. "Human dignity should be protected from womb to tomb" he stated.

He stressed that the bishops would work to "defend and lift up the poor" and to "encourage immigration reform, while we continue to care for those in need who cross our borders".

The archbishop clarified that the conference "certainly does not encourage illegal immigration" and reminded attendees of their responsibility to see Christ in "the hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, stranger or the sick".

Concerns on mass deportations

El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the USCCB's migration committee, spoke on the potential for mass deportations under Trump's administration. Seitz said the conference would "raise our voice loudly" if fundamental protections for migrants were threatened, calling it a "test for our nation" regarding its commitment to human rights.

"We will raise our voice loudly if those basic protections for people that have been a part of our country from its very beginning are not being respected" Seitz said. He emphasised that the church's role includes advocating for both legal and human rights.

Conscience and the Military

Broglio also addressed concerns about potential military involvement in deportation efforts. While military personnel typically cannot object to individual policies or actions, Broglio noted that "no one can be obliged to go against his or her conscience".

He added that military chaplains would support personnel in navigating ethical conflicts within the constraints of military service.

Looking forward, Broglio noted economic considerations around potential mass deportations, suggesting that filling open jobs could be a more pragmatic approach.

Source

• RNS

Exit polls conducted by the Washington Post, NBC News and the Associated Press reveal that Trump claimed roughly 56% of the Catholic vote compared to Harris' 41%, a 15-point lead in key swing states.

According to the Washington Post, this outcome marks a notable departure from the 2020 election where Trump led Joe Biden among Catholic voters by only five points.

Trump's ability to gain traction among Catholics reflects an appeal to voters with traditional values, particularly on abortion and immigration.

The Associated Press VoteCast poll shows that 90% of voters who believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases supported Trump. In comparison, Harris retained 69% of voters in favour of more liberal abortion policies.

Additionally, Trump held a 25-point lead among Catholics on immigration and a 19-point lead on the economy, topics that resonated with a demographic historically split between the two main parties.

Generational shift

According to Massimo Faggioli, professor of Historical Theology at Villanova University, Trump's strong support among Catholics represents a generational shift.

"The cultural and ethnic diversification of American Catholics does not mean they automatically align with the 'diversity party'" he explained.

"There are fewer Catholics in the USA that look like Biden and (former Speaker of the House Nancy) Pelosi" Faggioli argued.

Faggioli also noted that Trump reached out to Catholics in the country "in a way that the Harris-Walz campaign did not". For instance, Donald Trump chose a Catholic convert as Vice-President, JD Vance.

Ideological rifts

Looking ahead, some analysts speculate on the broader implications of a second Trump presidency for US Catholics.

Faggioli predicts further ideological rifts within the Catholic community, with debates likely to centre on immigration, climate change and other social issues.

The response of US bishops to Trump's policies will be closely observed, especially given their past criticisms of Biden's stance on abortion.

According to the Washington Post poll, non-Catholic Christians also voted in strong numbers for Trump (62%). On the other hand, Jews (79%), other believers (60%) and non-religious (72%) supported Harris.

Sources

Catholic News Agency

La Croix International

CathNews New Zealand

Pelosi, a top Democrat from California, revealed her thoughts on saying the former president's name and described him as "what's-his-name" during an interview with The Guardian released Tuesday.

"I hardly ever say his name," Pelosi said.

"I think [Trump is] a grotesque word…You just don't like the word passing your lips," she added. "I just don't. I'm afraid, you know, when I grew up Catholic, as I am now, if you said a bad word, you could burn in hell if you didn't have a chance to confess. So I don't want to take any chances."

"It's up there with, like, swearing." Continue reading

It marks the end of a generation of Catholics in politics, those who arrived on the national political scene in the wake of World War II and the GI Bill of the Kennedys and Vatican II.

They were finally able to leave behind the marginalisation of the "papists" from the mainstream, where American Protestantism and the liberal establishment dominated, making the idea of a Catholic in the White House uncomfortable, to say the least.

Thanks to the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Biden, there are no longer suspicions about Catholics' loyalties.

But questions about the real content of liberal democracy today have ecumenically spread beyond the confines of Catholicism.

The end of an era

It's the end of an era that had begun some time ago and is now coming to pass.

The most evident change is that America is no longer, such as during the time of Kennedy, a "three-religion country" of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

Catholics hold 29 percent of the seats in the 117th Congress, but it's not necessarily a growing influence. It's more than the disappearance, in the last two decades, of pro-life Catholic politicians among the Democrats.

The focus on "social justice" has often swallowed up the rest of the Catholic imagination on the political and ecclesial left, and this has given space to a deep-seated revanchism from fellow Catholics on the right.

The fact that there is a majority of Catholic justices on the US Supreme Court today has not exactly benefited the credentials for the democratic culture of Catholicism in America.

Parallels have been drawn, both in America and at the Vatican, between Biden's decision and the late Pope Benedict XVI's resignation in 2013.

Besides the differences, especially in the freedom with which that decision was taken, there is the fact that, unlike Benedict XVI, Biden leaves no epigones, much less a Catholic movement behind him.

There are Catholics among the younger generations of Democrats in politics, but their Catholicism plays a more marginal role in their personal identity and political values.

The rift and the void

The void that Biden leaves behind is bigger than the rift with the majority of Catholic bishops on the issue of abortion as well as gender, and that made many of them quietly or openly favor Trump in the previous election.

Some bishops became even quieter - actually silent - when the former president and his cabal tried to overturn the results of the elections between November 2020 and January 2021.

That rift between Biden and the bishops on the admission to Communion for Catholics in public office who support legislation permitting abortion, euthanasia, or other moral evils did not become formal-sacramental.

That was thanks in part to the extraordinary intervention of the Vatican in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in May 2021.

However, it has never truly healed.

New era

Biden's exit marks a change in internal relations within US. Catholicism.

It is not simply the disappearance of conciliar Catholicism in favor of anti-conciliar Catholicism in a neo-conservative or traditionalist fashion.

The National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis (July 17-21 quite different from the previous one, in Minneapolis in 1941) has shown how the triad doctrine-life-worship of US Catholicism is a complex mixture.

It involves: forgetfulness (sometimes outright rejection) of Vatican II but also an anonymous reception of it; Catholic pride but also embrace of styles of worship that have a lot in common with American Protestant revivalism; quest for interior peace but also drive for emotional entertainment shareable on social media.

The push to include ecclesial identities other than the Irish and continental European ones, which have dominated for a century and a half, now finds support.

That support is not only in theological progressivism descending from the Enlightenment but also in the globalised traditionalism of the ethno-culturalist brand.

Certainly, an illiberal traditionalism is very active and well-funded in the United States, both at the theological and political level.

But the situation is more complicated and must be seen honestly in the context of the crisis of progressive Catholicism, the "spirit of Vatican II" Catholics, even in Europe.

This recent phase of identity-driven secularisation has created a void that was filled by intellectual, ecclesial, and ecclesiastical forces that cater to the post-modern self with ready-made answers (simplified as much as you want).

They appeal to the younger generations more directly than the ones projected by academic and collegiate Catholicism (to which I belong as a member of the professoriate).

A Catholic like J.D. Vance, Trump's choice for vice president, exemplifies a generation of post-liberal, anti-"woke" political-intellectual operatives who constantly shift ideologies in an attempt to define family, community, and polity — without paying much attention to Catholic social thought.

Biden's departure is certainly the end of an era but for reasons beyond the lack of a generation of Catholic politicians on the left.

It's a discontinuity that has to do with the interruption in the transmission of Vatican II Catholicism, in its comprehensive "catholicity," in many quarters of the Church in the United States, especially in the seminaries for the formation of the clergy.

Indeed, US militant and conservative Catholicism has largely cut its ties with the theology of Vatican II, but this is not just an American problem.

What is happening in the United States could be a good opportunity to look also into the Catholic Church in Europe, which is largely in denial.

What is happening in American politics with the retirement of a "Vatican II Catholic" like Joe Biden and the emergence of a politically expedient "cultural Catholicism" is also happening in Italian politics, for example.

As seen from the Vatican

The new configuration of the American electoral campaign opens two fronts of uncertainty for the Vatican.

With Biden's exit, Pope Francis loses a predictable interlocutor on internal issues and a reliable one on international issues (despite the differences in opinions and policies about Ukraine and Israel).

The post-Biden Democratic Party will be more distant from Rome and Europe: today's America is no longer an extension of the old continent, the last province of the Roman Empire of the neo-conservative dreams.

The relationship between a Trump-Vance administration and the Vatican (migration and environmental policies, Ukraine, Israel, China) is anyone's guess.

But it also opens an internal front within the Church, with the Vatican grappling with two different and opposing radicalisms (in different ways) on the abortion issue and on gender.

Culture war

If Kamala Harris were to be dragged into culture war fights, this might influence her relations with the Catholic Church both domestically and internationally and deteriorate the alignment with the Vatican that Biden was able to create and keep.

Some US bishops probably felt orphaned by the new GOP that, in its platform for the 2024 elections, demoted the abortion issue: the 2022 "Dobbs" ruling of the Supreme Court transformed the pro-life cause into an electoral liability in many districts.

But if Harris campaigns as a culture warrior, it is predictable that even more bishops will return to placing their hopes in the Republican Party, which has become a risk to the survival of constitutional democracy in America.

If Trump is elected, J.D. Vance could become the highest-ranking Catholic in a post-democratic or authoritarian United States.

One of the paradoxes of this American moment is that it was a Catholic president, Joe Biden, who in 2020-2021 helped save American democracy, which, at least until Kennedy and Vatican II, Catholics were accused of not believing in.

Now, the relationship between the political cultures of US Catholicism and American democracy enters a new territory.

• First published in La Croix
• Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix International, and contributing writer to Commonweal.

Making history

Today, she is one step closer to making history again.

On Sunday, July 21, President Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term amid concerns from within their party that he would be unable to defeat Republican Donald Trump.

Mr. Biden's departure frees his delegates to vote for whomever they choose.

Ms. Harris, whom Mr. Biden backed after ending his candidacy, is thus far the only declared candidate. Should she secure the Democratic nomination, she would be the first Black woman to lead a major party ticket.

Few, if any, presidential candidates have had as much exposure to the world's religions as Kamala Harris, the 59-year-old vice president from California.

Harris' ethnic, racial and cultural biography represents a slice of the U.S. population that is becoming ascendant but that has never been represented in the nation's highest office.

Harris and her faith

Here are five faith facts about Harris:

She was raised on Hinduism and Christianity.

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was from Chennai, India; her father, Donald Harris, from Jamaica. The two met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her name, Kamala, means "lotus" in Sanskrit, and is another name for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. She visited India multiple times as a girl and got to know her relatives there.

But because her parents divorced when she was 7, she also grew up in Oakland and Berkeley attending predominantly Black churches.

Her downstairs neighbor, Regina Shelton, often took Kamala and her sister Maya to Oakland's 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. Harris now considers herself a Black Baptist.

She is married to a Jewish man.

Harris met her husband, Los Angeles lawyer Douglas Emhoff, on a blind date in San Francisco. They married in 2014. At their wedding, the couple smashed a glass to honor Emhoff's upbringing (a traditional Jewish wedding custom).

It was Harris' first marriage and his second.

An article in the Jewish press described her imitation of her Jewish mother-in-law, Barbara Emhoff, as "worthy of an Oscar."

She was criticised for not proactively assisting in civil cases against Catholic clergy sex abuse during the years she served as a prosecutor.

After graduating from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, Harris specialized in prosecuting sex crimes and child exploitation as a young prosecutor.

But two investigations by The Intercept and The Associated Press found that Harris was consistently silent on the Catholic Church's abuse scandal — first as San Francisco district attorney and later as California's attorney general. Read more

• Yonat Shimron is an RNS National Reporter and Senior Editor.

If elected with Trump on November 5, Vance would be the second Catholic vice president in U.S. history after Biden.

However, he would be the first recent Catholic "convert" to rise to that position, and this says a lot about the theological and political trajectories of the Church in the United States.

1. A recent Catholic convert, part of a movement

More than any other church in the West, U.S. Catholicism has a significant portion of converts, that is, of members who joined the Catholic Church as adults (I am married to one of them).

There are many recent converts among Catholics in the United States who make their faith public. In politics, it's a sea change from the "cradle Catholicism" of older generations like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

It also differs from the young generation of Catholics in the Democratic Party, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who prioritise other aspects of their identities in their platform and politics.

Vance has spoken openly of his Catholicism in the recent past: Trump's campaign between now and November might need some adjustments to that messaging.

By joining the Catholic Church, Vance is part of a larger trend of high-profile conversions.

In recent decades, numerous politicians, journalists, and public intellectuals of conservative persuasion have joined the Catholic Church, viewing it as the "oldest" and most "conservative" Christian tradition.

In contrast to mainline American Protestantism, they see this conversion as a means to save America from decline.

But Vance did it during the Trump years, during his (first) term in office at the White House, in 2019.

Vance's choice to join the Catholic Church did not interfere but rather accompanied his conversion to Trumpism; while he had been very critical of Trump just a few years earlier, he then embraced and became Trump's more presentable face.

It is known that Americans tend to change churches or religious traditions often during the course of their lives, more than other Christians in the West.

Vance was exposed to the Southern Baptist preacher Billy Graham by his grandmother, and to Protestant Pentecostalism as a teenager, in a family that, in his 2016 bestselling memoir (cum policy argument) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis (Harper 2016), he described as deeply dysfunctional.

He wrote it between 2013 and 2015, several years before becoming Catholic, and gives no hint that he had ever considered Catholicism.

Vance mentions the word "Catholic" or "Catholics" only five times in the 264-page book, and he never engages with Catholic teachings in it.

Vance went through a period of atheism, and his efforts to solve the contradictions between faith and science were crucial to his embrace of Christianity and Catholicism.

As he wrote in his autobiographical essay published in 2020 in the Catholic magazine The Lamp, "I read Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, and called myself an atheist."

He was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church in August 2019 at St. Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati, Ohio, by the Rev. Henry Stephan, a Dominican friar.

He chose St. Augustine as his patron saint as he said to his friend and "Christianist" ideologue Rod Dreher (author of the 2017 international bestselling manifesto The Benedict Option, who now lives and works at the court of Viktor Orban in Budapest) in an August 2019 interview published in The American Conservative.

Vance is a young and recent Catholic who grew up as a non-denominational Christian and overcame a lot of negative stereotypes about Catholicism typical of American Protestantism (the alleged anti-biblicism and Mariolatry).

In this, there is a certain pride to being Catholic that is counter-cultural and pushes back against the tendency of liberal progressives to blame the Catholic Church for numerous social, cultural, and political ills.

For Vance, Christianity and the Church are not the problem but the solution to the ills of the political-religious project called the United States of America.

He said that the revelations on the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church delayed his conversion but, in the end, did not prevent it. Augustine's ecclesiology of the ecclesia permixta, made of both saints and sinners, surely helps the faithful to overcome the disgust that has led many cradle Catholics, both on the left and the right, to leave the Church.

He is also someone who chose Catholicism as a response to his perception of the limits of American Protestantism, but also of its limited impact on U.S. culture and politics.

He is a proud Catholic, and like many recent converts from Protestantism does not bring clericalism with him: there is a "lay pride" in that kind of Catholicism - which does not imply a progressive theology, but it's part of a certain ecclesiological populism and conservative anger against the perceived corruption of the ecclesiastical system and clerical hierarchies.

2. More Silicon Valley than Catholic Social Doctrine

Vance is a mix of Elon Musk-like technocracy and Charles Maurras's civilisational Catholicism.

He is a protégé of Peter Thiel (the gay billionaire who invented, among other things, PayPal), and his rise has been largely helped by a group of tech titans.

Vance embodies the peculiar alliance in today's GOP between cultural-religious traditionalists (Catholics, in this case) and Silicon Valley.

His is the anti-elitism proclaimed by the new elites, fueling the rage of those who are socially and economically marginalised.

Vance's choice to embrace the faith was a way to express his contempt for secular intellectual elites: as he wrote in The Lamp, "Secularism may not have been a prerequisite to joining the elites, but it sure made things easier".

His is a very American Catholicism, in some sense an "America First Catholicism", at a distance from Vatican and global Catholicism, which has grown complacent with Trump's "Make America Great Again", as well as his gangsterism and violent rhetoric.

Vance's view of the relations between religion and politics is closer to Pat Buchanan's, one of the leading Republican and Catholic ideologues of the "culture wars" since the Nixon era, than to John Paul II's or Benedict XVI's.

Compared to other recent U.S. converts, he has been less polemical against Pope Francis (even though in 2021, he politely disagreed with the restrictions against the pre-Vatican II "Latin Mass").

Vance is a politician and cannot damage his appeal to Roman Catholics, who do not like to see the Pope attacked.

Vance's populism in economic policies could converge with some aspects of Pope Francis' critique of capitalism, but only at a superficial level.

In the interview with Dreher, he said: "I think the Republican Party has been too long a partnership between social conservatives and market libertarians, and I don't think social conservatives have benefited too much from that partnership.

"Part of social conservatism's challenge for viability in the 21st century is that it can't just be about issues like abortion, but it has to have a broader vision of political economy and the common good."

Certainly, there is a sea of difference between Francis' message on the environment and immigration and Vance's denialism, which is typical of today's Republican Party.

His Catholicism is not the 20th-century social Catholicism that presupposed a strong role for government programmes: Vance is supported by Silicon Valley libertarians who know they will benefit from a second Trump presidency.

But in public, Vance has embraced populism as a response against the neo-liberal policies that progressive Catholicism has been indifferent to for too long.

3. Theology and Church: Augustine and Aquinas

Theologically, it is relevant that Vance was baptized and confirmed (and arrived at that decision) through connections and conversations with members of the Dominican Order.

Intellectually, it's a different world from Biden's connection with the Jesuits, the vanguard of American Catholic liberal progressivism, especially on the East and West Coasts.

The choice of his confirmation saint confirms the key importance of the binomial Augustine - Thomas Aquinas (interpreted in ways that often differ from European, continental theology) for conservative, post-liberal, or anti-liberal Catholicism in contemporary USA.

When he talked about Augustine in his article in The Lamp, Vance emphasised not the doctrinal and ecclesiological side but the personal-emotional (The Confessions) and the political-Weltanschauung (The City of God):

"I had been a fan of Augustine since a political theorist in college assigned City of God."

As it happens often these days in American colleges and universities, he was exposed to Catholicism not by a theologian, but a political scientist. He expressed an interest in René Girard thanks (again) to Peter Thiel in 2013, six years before his baptism and confirmation.

He is a politician who has thought for a long time about religion, Christianity, and Catholicism, but without over-intellectualising it.

As he said multiple times, "I like that the Catholic Church is old." He is not a Vatican II Catholic: he is more for ressourcement than aggiornamento in his quest for theological solidity and doctrinal stability.

The Second Vatican Council does not appear in his theological pantheon, nor does it fit his political persona: this is typical of many Catholic converts of political and religious conservative persuasions.

But in his own way, typical of all American Catholics, including those on the conservative side of the spectrum, he is a Catholic who could not do without Vatican II.

His wife, Usha, is the daughter of immigrants from India and she is a Hindu.

When the couple married in 2014, they held two ceremonies, including one where a Hindu pundit blessed them.

When it's about non-Christian religions, Islam is a different matter, as befits Trump's running mate: he claimed that the United Kingdom under the Labour Party might be the first "truly Islamist" country with nuclear weapons.

He is on the opposite side of the Catholic social doctrine shaped by Vatican II.

As Michael Sean Winters put it in 2022, "Vance's fraudulence is discerned in the fact that while he celebrates Catholicism as a vehicle for his sociocultural vision, he departs from the teaching of the Church on a host of issues, from immigration to labor rights to climate change."

In 2021, Vance attended the Napa Institute's annual gathering of right-wing Catholic big donors and influencers, with the participation of some conservative prelates.

In 2022, he participated in a public event at a Franciscan Catholic university where speakers argued in favor of integralism.

Vance has yet to answer questions about his own thoughts regarding Catholic integralism, that is, about the relations between the Church and the State, and his views on the recent surge of integralist thought among U.S. Catholic thinkers in the last decade.

(Recently, Trump disavowed the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025," proposals of conservative and right-wing policy to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power if he were to win the 2024 presidential election. But in 2022, he endorsed it, and some of his allies are behind the project.)

He made no mystery in a recent interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat that he condoned what Trump did on January 6, 2021, in his attempt to overthrow the government that led to five deaths and the most serious threat in generations to the stability of the American democratic system of government.

That should give U.S. Catholics (bishops included) who have struggled for at least a century and a half to become part of the project of constitutional democracy in America some pause.

4. A face of the new U.S. Catholicism

Where is Vance's Catholicism going?

What will be its effect on U.S. politics and the Church? In an important difference compared to other prominent Catholic converts, Vance is a politician, and he needs to win in what is now a less religious country, even among conservatives, compared to just ten years ago.

We modern believers are all travelers. Vance has traveled from atheism to Catholicism, from libertarianism to economic populism, from Appalachia to Yale to the Senate in Washington, D.C., via Silicon Valley.

Vance seems to have solved, in his own way, the famous dictum by the great American Catholic writer Walker Percy (another adult convert to Catholicism), who said once that modern man has two choices — Rome or California.

Vance is still traveling and might go much farther, even to the White House. His public Catholicism is subject to more negotiations than for a private person, a journalist, or a pastor.

There was no mention of the Church or Catholicism in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, where religion figured very marginally, following the cues from Trump and a more secular, post-Christian GOP.

He has shifted his position on abortion, leaving pro-life Catholics with a sense of abandonment.

More than moral pragmatism against the cruelty for women of some anti-abortion policies, his shift in position sounds like cynicism in light of the fact that the Supreme Court ruling of 2022 "Dobbs" turned abortion into a political liability for Republicans.

In a campaign fundraising message on July 8, Vance called for mass deportations of immigrants without legal status, a promise also present in the Republican Party platform.

"We need to deport every single person who invaded our country illegally." It is hard to understand how he will reconcile this with Pope Francis' and the US bishops' position on immigration.

Vance is a neo-Catholic millennial in a secularised America that is still the center of the West. Embracing the faith is a form of cultural dissent, a dissent that, while genuine, can get along in an alliance with neo-pagan and anti-religious Silicon Valley technocrats ruling the world.

American Catholicism is no longer just the refuge for conservative ideologues, as it has been between the 1990s and a few years ago.

It's now a brand for sale, and Vance has also come to the national, political, and global stage thanks to the new masters of the universe.

It's not clear how interested he is personally in buying that brand and being identified with it because it depends on the political necessities determined by his master, Donald Trump. But others are buying that brand, people politically close to his party.

Trump's choice marks "the anointing of a youthful vice president and heir apparent," as his friend, New York Times columnist, and fellow Catholic convert Ross Douthat put it.

If elected with Donald Trump, J.D. Vance might not only end up running the country but also contribute from that pulpit to changing the Catholic Church in the United States.

• First published in La Croix
• Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix International, and contributing writer to Commonweal.

Today, we have an elderly pope in Rome, an elderly president and an elderly Republican candidate for president.

Age and ability

Because the 87-year-old pope has difficulty walking, the media were constantly talking about the possibility of Pope Francis resigning.

People forget that a president in a wheelchair got us through the Great Depression and World War II.

The ability to walk is not essential for popes or presidents.

In any case, the media stopped talking about the pope resigning after he performed so well in an extensive interview on "60 Minutes" and CBS News.

He was attentive, his answers were clear and his pastoral personality shone through. He hit the ball out of the park. Although some people did not like some of his answers, no one could judge him incapable of performing his duties.

Sadly, 81-year-old Joe Biden's performance in the debate with his 78-year-old opponent was not as encouraging, to say the least.

Rather than reassure the public, as the pope's appearance on CBS did, the debate reinforced concerns about the president's age, and caused handwringing among Democrats about whether it would be a permanent setback or something he can overcome in time.

Former president Trump

Biden's opponent was combative and on message, even though almost every word out of his mouth was a lie. The president's performance made us sad; Donald Trump's performance was scary.

Also scary are the people with whom the former president will surround himself if he returns to the White House.

The presidency is not a single person; it is also all the people the president brings to the executive branch to run the government.

Many of the experienced people who surrounded Trump in his first term have denounced him and endorsed Biden.

The second Trump presidency will be filled with incompetent sycophants.

Systemic issues

Beyond the personalities of the candidates, there are systemic issues that got us where we are today.

First, the Republican Party for decades was run by corporate interests who used popular grievances about race and religion to win elections so they could push through lower taxes and fewer regulations.

Republican demagoguery opened the way for a demagogue to take over the party from the corporate elites and party professionals who ran the party in the past.

Pragmatism gave way to the politics of grievance, which said that getting even was more important than getting anything done.

The Democrats, on the other hand, retooled party politics by replacing their own party bosses with primary elections as the method of arriving at a nominee after the disaster of the 1968 Chicago convention.

But in the absence of party elders, money and media now determine who gets nominated.

As primaries took hold in both parties, too, the most radical voters, unchecked by party professionals, gained sway. Rather than moving toward the middle to win elections, the candidates now move to the extremes to appeal to those who hold the most ideological positions.

In the past, Republican Party bosses could have stopped Trump. Remember, Barry Goldwater told Richard Nixon that he had to go to end the Watergate scandal.

Democratic Party professionals could have told Biden to quit after four years. Remember, Lyndon Johnson stepped aside for his more progressive veep, Hubert Humphrey.

Today, no elected Republican who faces a primary has the courage to speak out against Trump.

Nor is it likely Democratic professionals could get Biden to step aside and then coalesce around a new candidate without a political bloodbath. Every candidate puts self over party.

Today's politics makes one yearn for the days of Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley.

Party bosses brought us the likes of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. True, there was graft and corruption, but at least the garbage was collected. And a multitude of political professionals is better than one-man rule.

Money and media celebrities are running the country without any check. It is time to reverse this trend by giving some power back to political professionals.

• First published in RNS
• Thomas J. Reese, SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service

The cause was a column by the Italian theologian and church historian Massimo Faggioli (pictured), who teaches in the USA.

In the column he linked parts of American Catholicism with the former US president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In response, the bishop's organisation threatened to take legal action. But what exactly had happened?

The article

Faggioli's article, entitled "Will Trumpism spare Catholicism?", drew a connection between Donald Trump and various Catholic figures and hinted at a possible link between Trump and Bishop Joseph Strickland.

Strickland was dismissed from his diocese after his rebellious behaviour and frequent criticism of Pope Francis' pontificate.

Faggioli described overlaps between Trump's controversial right-wing nationalism and the conservative Catholicism represented by figures such as Strickland and the former Apostolic Nuncio to the USA, Archbishop Vigano.

Strickland in particular has repeatedly accused Francis of spreading schismatic ideas with the declaration of blessing "Fiducia supplicans".

After the presidential elections in December 2020, the former chief pastor of the small Texan diocese of Tyler also took part in a demonstration of Trump supporters who did not want to recognise Joe Biden's election victory with a prayer via video message.

Criticism of the Catholic cultural establishment

Faggioli's thesis is therefore based on such events, but above all the "Catholic Prayer for Trump", which took place on 19 March in Mar-a-Logo - the former US president's place of residence.

There, Trump was presented as the "only Catholic option".

Six months before the presidential elections in the USA, the theologian spoke of an "ahistorical fundamentalism of militant Catholicism" that is "mixed with nationalist impulses".

This disguises itself as concern for the "forgotten ordinary American (white) man".

In the original version of the article, Faggioli spoke of an "emerging Catholic cultural establishment" in the United States, dominated by intellectual figures of traditional, apologetic Catholicism.

According to Faggioli, they may be theologically educated, but they are hostile to modernity and are "on Trump's side" with such a view.

Faggioli described overlaps between Trump's controversial right-wing nationalism and the conservative Catholicism represented by figures such as Strickland.

Faggioli was referring to the Barron Media Group's new theological magazine entitled "The New Ressourcement", according to a report in the "National Catholic Reporter".

Among conservative Catholics, Faggioli said, there is "no shortage of academic and intellectual initiatives, with various references to Trumpism", but which are "all intent on orthodoxy".

Barron and his critics

Barron has been repeatedly criticised by Catholics, especially for his collaboration with right-wing thinkers and influencers.

These include names such as Ben Shapiro, former editor of the right-wing internet portal "Breitbart News" and the psychologist, YouTube influencer and author of self-help books Jordan Peterson.

Over the past few years, Barron has responded to his critics by accepting invitations to events organised by companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook in order to rebut criticism that he is only dealing with "conservative culture warriors".

At the end of January of this year, however, the senior pastor was once again a guest of Peterson to discuss the fallacy of self-deification.

Most recently, however, Barron published a guest post on the internet portal of the television channel "CNN", in which he praised the talk show host and comedian Bill Maher for no longer criticising religions, especially Catholicism, but "woke" thinking.

He therefore sees Maher as an "unlikely ally" in the ongoing and bitter culture wars.

Two cease-and-desist letters to the editors

The publishers of "Commonweal Magazine" reported to the Catholic portal "National Catholic Reporter" that the bishop's media organisation had sent a "cease and desist letter" to Faggioli.

After consultation, the decision was made to withdraw the "controversial" paragraph.

The editors' note reads: "With the author's permission, the editors have removed a paragraph that originally appeared here because Bishop Robert Barron's media office, Word on Fire, has informed us that they consider it defamatory to be associated in any way with Donald Trump and Trumpism."

But even that was apparently not enough for the Bishop of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota: In a second cease-and-desist letter, "Word on Fire" took an even firmer stance against the editors' note.

Once again, dissatisfaction was expressed at being associated in any way with Donald Trump.

Repeated threats of legal action were made against Commonweal, and both the article and the editor's note continued to be labelled "libelous and defamatory".

The editorial team responded with an article entitled "Silencing the press".

In it, the editorial team expressed surprise at Barron's actions: "Public figures must expect journalistic criticism precisely because they are public figures.

"This also includes those who bring their faith into the public eye."

It is their right to complain about criticism, but they are not exempt from it.

"They enjoy no special protection from opinions about their intentions, their statements or the political society in which they live.

"Moreover, no one is entitled to deference or special treatment simply because they speak from a position of religious authority," it says.

And further: "This includes American bishops, including or especially those who maintain a highly visible public presence through interviews, social media and popular media services."

The editorial team emphasises that a different agreement could have been reached.

A letter would have been "an obvious place to start if Word on Fire believes that we and Faggioli need a fraternal rebuke".

A letter would also have led to a constructive or at least clarifying exchange and saved Word on Fire from being "perceived as another well-funded organisation that wants to silence its critics through litigation". Read more

• Mario Trifunovic is a theologian & journalist from the Frankfurt Rhine-Main Metropolitan Area in Germany.

"I would say, in listening to the charges from the judge, who's, as you know, very conflicted, and corrupt, because of the conflicting, very very corrupt, Mother Teresa could not beat the charges," Trump told reporters after jurors began deliberating in his criminal hush-money trial

Social media reactions were predictable. One commentator remarked that "although both Mother Teresa and Trump were born to human parents and had all the hallmarks of the Homo sapiens species, the similarities might end there."

Trump did not reply when a reporter asked if he was holier than Mother Teresa. Read more

According to the data, neither Biden nor his Republican rival, former president Donald Trump, are viewed favourably by most Catholics surveyed, but Biden is the more unpopular of the two.

The findings were part of a presentation on "Religion and Politics Ahead of the US Elections" by Pew's associate director of research, Greg Smith, at the 2024 annual conference of the Religion News Association, which concluded over the weekend.

Included in the data provided by Smith, Pew's late February survey of 12,000 US adults found that only 35% of Catholics hold a favourable view of Biden, while 64% have an unfavourable view of the incumbent president.

Read More

Pence also made light of Trump's legal issues, referencing reports that classified documents were found in Trump's home during an FBI search. Pence suggested that the documents were found in the president's Bible, proving, he said, that Trump had absolutely no idea they were there. Read more

The President and President-elect both followed their usual Sunday routines after the 2020 US election.

Mr Biden attended the 10.30 am Mass at St Joseph On the Brandywine Catholic Church in Wilmington with his wife and grandchildren.

After Mass, Biden visited the cemetery across the street where his parents, first wife, young daughter and son Beau are buried.

Meanwhile Trump, confirmed a Presbyterian who now identifies as ‘non-denominational Christian', visited his golf club in Sterling, Virginia. He was greeted by supporters as well as by demonstrators lining the sidewalks near the club's entrance chanting and waving signs.

The sitting president sent six tweets, all flagged as misinformation by Twitter. They maintained he won the election, before getting in his second round of golf for the weekend.

Mr Trump has not made an official in-person speech since the election was called. But, there has been no shortage of tweets from him claiming the election was stolen and that he won by "A LOT".

Trump quoted conservative surrogates like Newt Gingrich who have falsely claimed that there was rampant voter fraud in the election.

Twitter flagged his remarks, affixing to each of his tweets a label reading: "This claim about election fraud is disputed."

The President-elect progressed with planning for taking office in January. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have launched an updated website as they prepare for the transition process.

The site includes four priorities of their upcoming administration: COVID-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

Sources

• Independent
• NPR

Reportedly tapped by President Trump to replace the late US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg, the 48-year-old jurist has only sat on the federal bench for three years, after being successfully nominated by Trump to the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

She's written more than 100 decisions and dissents, according to the Chicago Tribune. And while she maintains that her faith does not enter into her rulings on the law, Barrett twice joined with a minority of judges in dissenting opinions that favoured reconsidering rulings that struck down state restrictions on abortion rights.

One case involved an Indiana law that would have required that the parents be notified when minors seek consent for the procedure from the courts, while the other — also passed in Indiana, her home state — banned abortions for reasons related to gender, race or disability, and also required that fetal remains be buried or cremated.

Although the Hoosier State only appealed the decision regarding fetal remains, Barrett and the other dissenters addressed the law's other provisions, noting that "there is a difference between ‘I don't want a child' and ‘I want a child, but only a male,' or ‘I want only children whose genes predict success in life.'"

"Using abortion to promote eugenic goals is morally and prudentially debatable," the dissenters argued.

Both of those cases later wound up before the Supreme Court, which reinstated Indiana's regulation of fetal remains and ordered a reconsideration of its parental-notification law.

The hot-button abortion issue also featured prominently during Barrett's confirmation hearing for her seat on the 7th Circuit, which reviews rulings from federal district courts in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.

Liberal Democratic senators grilled Barrett — whose children include two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome — on how her religious beliefs might affect her rulings, citing an article she co-wrote in 1998 for the Marquette Law Review that said the Catholic Church's "prohibitions against abortion and euthanasia (properly defined) are absolute."

"The dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern when you come to big issues that people have fought for for years in this country," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) told Barrett.

But when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked when it would be "proper for a judge to put their religious views above applying the law," Barrett answered, "Never."

"It's never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge's personal convictions, whether they derive from faith or anywhere else, on the law," she added.

Following the hearing, Barrett was confirmed by the Senate in a near-party-line vote, 55-43.

But her reported membership in People of Praise, an ecumenical Christian community, has fueled Democrats' doubts. The group was one of many established in the wake of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s to encourage the Catholic laity to follow the early Christians and form small communities for prayer and mutual support.

Amy Coney Barrett facts

• Born one of seven children in Louisiana, she is the 48-year-old mother of seven kids, including two adopted children from Haiti and a child with Down syndrome
• Strong Catholic faith and a member of the "People of Praise" charismatic community
• A favourite of originalists and social conservatives, she clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia
• Has written more than 100 decisions and dissents since joining the federal bench
• Criticized Chief Justice John Roberts' decision to save Obamacare individual mandate in 2017
• Twice joined in dissenting opinions that favoured reconsidering rulings that struck down state restrictions on abortion rights
• Supported a challenge to federal and state laws that bar people convicted of felonies from owning firearms
• Sided with the Trump administration in a case that challenged his policy of denying immigrants permanent residency if they would need too many taxpayer-funded benefits, including welfare, food stamps or Medicaid

Continue reading

Judge Amy Coney Barrett is reportedly the most likely presidential nominee for the role.

Appointed a federal judge in 2017, Barrett was a professor at Notre Dame law school until her nomination was confirmed.

As a nominee to the federal bench, Barrett was questioned by Democratic senators on how her Catholic faith would influence her decisions as a judge on cases of abortion and same-sex marriage.

During confirmation hearings, Senator Diane Feinstein said "the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that's of concern."

"You're controversial because many of us that have lived our lives as women really recognize the value of finally being able to control our reproductive systems."

Barrett insisted she would uphold the law of the land.

Pro-life groups hailed Barrett's 2017 appointment to the bench.

Barrett is reportedly a member of the People of Praise charismatic community, which was criticized as a "cult" during her 2017 confirmation hearings.

Bishop Peter Smith said in 2018 there is nothing unusual about the group.

"We're a lay movement in the Church," Smith explained. "There are plenty of these. We continue to try and live out life and our calling as Catholics, as baptized Christians, in this particular way, as other people do in other callings or ways that God may lead them into the Church."

The country's wait for Trump's decision about the new US Supreme Court nominee may not be long.

".@GOP We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices. We have this obligation, without delay!" Trump tweeted on Saturday.

Choosing her replacement in a hurry is the opposite of what Ginsburg wanted.

"My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed." NPR reported, hinting Ginsburg wanted her seat left vacant until 2025 if Trump is re-elected in November.

Ginsburg was the architect of the legal fight for women's rights in the 1970s, subsequently serving 27 years on the nation's highest court.

Former President George W. Bush acknowledged Ginsburg "dedicated many of her 87 remarkable years to the pursuit of justice and equality, and she inspired more than one generation of women and girls..."

Hillary Clinton also tweeted: "Justice Ginsburg paved the way for so many women, including me. There will never be another like her. Thank you RBG."

Whether he selects Barrett, Trump's Supreme Court nomination has become a matter of political controversy.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged a Trump nominee will be voted on for confirmation by the Senate, despite there being only seven weeks until the election.

Democratic leaders are pushing back, noting McConnell's refusal to consider President Obama's Supreme Court nominee seven months before the 2016 presidential contest.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Christian Post
• NPR
• The Australian
• Image: Mediaite

His campaign, which he announced July 4, could be dismissed as irrelevant: another plot twist in the increasingly bizarre annals of 2020, in which murder hornets run rampant and baby TikTok witches hex the moon.

But nothing is more emblematic of our age — not the unprecedented COVID times, but our present culture — than West's presidential run, which is deeply rooted in both his Christian faith and his absurdly devout passion for self-promotion. Read more

In the latest Quinnipiac poll (which thankfully includes a set of questions about religion), 55% of Catholics say they will definitely not vote for Trump in 2020, as opposed to 32% who say they definitely will vote for him and 12% who say they'd consider it.

Even if all those who are only considering voting for him end up in his corner, the resulting 55-44 margin would be a major blow to his reelection chances.

In 2016, Catholics voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton by 50% to 46%.

Given that Catholics make up roughly a quarter of the electorate, the 15-point shift away from him would equate to nearly four percent of the entire popular vote.

The poll suggests that the overall Catholic shift towards the Democrats in last fall's midterms is continuing.

In 2016, Catholics preferred Republican to Democratic House candidates 53% to 46%. In 2018, they swung the other way, favoring Democrats 50% to 49%.

When it comes to Trump, the shift among Catholics is more pronounced than among other religious groups.

In 2016, 39% of non-Catholic Christians (Protestants and others) voted for Clinton.

In the Q-poll, the proportion who say they definitely won't vote for Trump is up just two points from that, to 41%.

Nones show a comparably small point increase, from 67% who voted for Clinton to 70% who say they definitely won't vote for Trump.

Interestingly, the slippage is somewhat greater among white evangelicals.

Where 80% of them voted for Trump in 2016, now 60% say they'll definitely vote for him, and another 15% are considering it, for a total of 75%.

Where 16% voted for Clinton, now 24% say they definitely won't vote for Trump.

What accounts for the proportionately greater Catholic shift?

A number of explanations suggest themselves.

Even relatively conservative Catholics retain elements of Catholic social teaching that put them at odds with Trump policies. Continue reading

• Image: Religion News Service

Ramping up his message ahead of the European elections, Bannon said Francis should stay out of politics.

"He's the administrator of the church, and he's also a politician. This is the problem," Bannon - who lives in Italy - said.

"He's constantly putting all the faults in the world on the populist nationalist movement."

The Pope's remarks about social justice have long irked Bannon and those of his ideological mindset.

Swing back to April 2016, when Bannon suggested Matteo Salvini should start openly targeting Francis about migration, because Francis has made the plight of refugees a cornerstone of his papacy. (At that time, Salvini was the minister for the interior and the leader of Italy's anti-immigration League party.)

"Bannon advised [Salvini] ... the pope is a sort of enemy. He suggested for sure to attack, frontally," a senior League insider says.

Salvini became more outspoken against the pope, claiming conservatives in the Vatican were on his side.

As an example, on 6 May 2016, after the pope's plea for compassion towards migrants, Salvini said: "Uncontrolled immigration, an organised and financed invasion, brings chaos and problems, not peace."

Salvini - who is now the Deputy Prime Minister of Italy's coalition cabinet - says he wants to bring the far right from across Europe into an alliance.

Last week, only days after meeting Bannon in Rome, Salvini revealed his "vision of Europe for the next 50 years", calling it the launch of a new right-wing coalition for the European parliamentary elections on 23 May.

Some say the timing of Italy's new coalition and Salvini's meeting with Bannon suggest Salvini has been handpicked as the informal leader of Eurosceptic populist forces in Europe.

According to Mischaël Modrikamen, the Movement's managing director, six months ago Bannon and Salvini tweeted that Italy's deputy prime minister "is in!"

Bannon also takes issue with the pope's warnings over resurgent populist movements.

"You can go around Europe and it's [populism] catching fire and the pope is just dead wrong," he says.

After Salvini and Bannon's 2016 meeting, Salvini was photographed holding up a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: "Benedict is my pope."

The slogan refers to a Vatican version of the "birther" campaign waged by Trump against Barack Obama, claiming that Francis's papacy is illegitimate and that his predecessor Benedict XVI is the true pontiff.

The League source also alleged that Salvini would have attacked the pope harder but was restrained by his own party, predominantly by Giancarlo Giorgetti, the deputy federal secretary of Lega Nord who is close to senior figures in the Vatican.

Bannon has been building opposition to Francis through his Dignitatis Humanae Institute, based in a 13th-century mountaintop monastery not far from Rome.

In January 2017, Bannon became a patron of the institute, whose honorary president is Cardinal Raymond Burke, who believes organised networks of homosexuals are spreading a "gay agenda" in the Vatican.

The institute's chairman is former Italian MP Luca Volontè, who is presently on trial for corruption for accepting bribes from Azerbaijan. He has denied all charges.

Source

• The Guardian
• The Telegraph
• Image: Daily Express