Pope Leo Hits Home Runs in Africa
There’s no place like home, and Leo XIV must be happy to have returned safe and sound after a long African journey. The fond memories he brings back to his modest residence — several high-ceilinged rooms in the Papal Palace, a jewel of preservationist interior decorating in Vatican City (an independent state in the middle of Rome) — will stay with him; more important, in his estimation, is knowing the joy and strengthened faith he brought to the tens of thousands of faithful who attended the masses he celebrated, plus the millions who paid attention and heard or read about them.
Leo’s African journey was a triumph and an essential step — a turning point — in the long-running basic competition of modern times: free societies versus tyranny. In this instance, the pope was batting well over .300, across more than a thousand miles of Africa, from the coast of Barbary into the steaming jungles of Cameroon, to the arid flatlands of Angola, to the sun-drenched waters of Equatorial Guinea.
The message was clear: the gospel will set you free, and the freedom of Africa is one of the great challenges of the century. Despite centuries of plunder by rapacious outsiders, the Africans still have one of the richest continents, with abundant resources, oil, minerals, rare and precious stones, and above all: people. It is the youngest continent, with the average age around 20. Its people are eager, open-hearted, open-minded, eager to work, and yet plagued by wasteful and horrible tribal conflicts abetted by wicked old men called Big Men. In plain English: tyrants.
Leo went there to reassure them in their faith — Africa is largely Christian, and apart from Algeria, the countries he visited have Catholic pluralities — and encourage them in their quest for freedom. He made it quite clear that there is no reason for a nonegenarian to be in power in Yaoundé. It’s ridiculous and has no place on a continent so young and vital.
The question is who will maintain the peace and prevent the intertribal wars that invite interventions by rapacious outsiders. That is the question; what Leo knows, however, is that the answer must be some combination of sword and spirit, distinct but complementary forces for good if and only if wielded by good men.
Which is why the taunts President Donald Trump addressed to Leo XIV during his travels were inopportune. Leo is neither, as Trump insinuated (in fact said explicitly), weak on crime, favorable to open borders, or soft on the preventive war against Shiite aggression.
Saying people, including immigrants, merit charity and welcome is not the same as inviting illegal border jumping. Saying wars must be fought by the rules of honor is not to say they should not be fought to be won decisively. Proposing interfaith dialogue with Islam is not to encourage Islamic war against the Judeo-Christian West.
African Islam is a barrier against the conquering, fanatical Islam of the Tehran regime and its proxies, and the jihadist bandit bands that plague North Africa and the Sahel. Rather than insist on the bad advice Chicago Democrats may be giving Leo in order to use him in their efforts to undermine the Trump administration, the president would be well advised to see the complementary consequences of his and Leo’s initiatives.
The reality is that we cannot prevail — we cannot endure — without both sword and spirit; nor can Trump’s foreign policy, which objectively contains potentially liberating and lasting elements of peace-making, succeed if it stops midway. The threat of the Trump-hating and isolationist factions in both U.S. political parties is that they turn fair criticism (essential to a free regime like ours) into a sapping of our own confidence in ourselves, even when we are winning.
Pope Leo’s young friend, Italian tennis star and world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, is currently in Madrid aiming for his fourth Masters win in a row and will be in Rome in about a week to aim for the next one. Maybe they can find time to work out together, extend an invitation to the president, and talk things over.