The Pope, the President, and Our Democratic Crisis President Donald Trump’s undermining of democratic institutions poses a difficult challenge for Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pope. Since World War II, the Catholic Church has endorsed democracy as an effective way to advance two of its foundational principles, human dignity and the common good. How should the Vatican respond when the world’s most powerful leader flouts democratic norms by abusing executive authority, violating basic human rights, and questioning the legitimacy of free elections? The question is complicated by the Church’s commitment to political neutrality. As a religious institution with a mission to spread the Good News of salvation, the Vatican respects the autonomy of the secular political sphere. Popes are committed to working with diverse governments, many of them autocratic, to safeguard the Church’s mission and protect its institutions and members. Historically, however, this respect for the secular realm has not meant agnosticism when it comes to political systems. For centuries, popes accepted autocracy as the preferred way to promote order, peace, and the common good. They opposed the French Revolution, universal human rights, and religious freedom as incompatible with those principles. Only at the turn of the twentieth century did Leo XIII encourage Catholic accommodation with democracy (while still insisting that the ideal polity embrace Catholicism as the official religion.) It was not until 1944 that Pius XII, responding to the catastrophe of war and dictatorship, threw the Church’s moral authority behind democracy as a promising way to advance human dignity, the common good, and peace in practice. The Second Vatican Council (1962–5) went further. While its key documents did not mention democracy by name, they acknowledged the constitutional principle of religious freedom, celebrated human rights, and affirmed political systems with elected leaders and a separation of powers. During h
