The DOJ's next target could be mind-blowing

Friends,

You’ve got to hand it to Pope Leo, who used a speech Thursday in Cameroon to express “woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”

I can’t imagine who Leo was talking about, can you?

In case there was any doubt, the pope added: “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters.”

The tyrant in the Oval Office has been trying to portray his war in Iran as a “just war” backed by the will of God and Jesus Christ. Pope Leo disagrees. Jesus, he says, “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.”

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s self-described secretary of war, has promised to give “no quarter” to the “barbaric savages” of the Iranian regime, and called on the American people to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

At a worship service at the Pentagon on March 25, Hegseth asked God for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Hegseth’s words apparently provoked Pope Leo to preach on Palm Sunday that God ignores the prayers of those whose “hands are full of blood” from making war.

This past Sunday, Trump attacked the pope on social media as “terrible on foreign policy,” and suggested that Trump himself was the reason Leo was selected to be pope in the first place.

On Tuesday, JD Vance said the pope should be more “careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

Hello? What in heaven’s name is the vice-president to the least-careful-of-what-he-says president doing telling the pope to be more careful of how he interprets Catholic theology?

I’m not Catholic, but I always thought the pope’s words about matters theological were considered by Catholics to be as close to God’s own words as humans can get.

Yesterday in Cameroon, the pope also said: “The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is not enough to rebuild. They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation.”

At this rate, Trump is going to demand the Justice Department open a criminal investigation of the pope. Trump will get hold of all the bills for restoring the Sistine Chapel and claim the pope misappropriated funds. He’ll have Jeanine Pirro seek an injunction against the pope to block any further papal statements. He’ll threaten that unless the pope stops criticizing him, he’ll get God to reconvene the College of Cardinals and fire Leo.

So far, though, Pope Leo isn’t backing down.

Praise the Lord.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org