How characteristic of Donald Trump to upstage Pope Francis at the actual funeral of the leader of the world’s 1.4billion Catholics. The picture of Trump sitting face-to-face in almost prayerful pose with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky inside St Peter’s Basilica is now the defining image of the occasion.
It will have done no harm to Trump’s strategy – a highly successful one – to demonstrate to America’s churchgoers that he, like them, is driven by faith in all he does.
It is a grotesque simulation but a necessary one, as what has become known as the evangelical vote is vital in US politics. George W Bush commandeered it to win elections, but the 43rd President actually believed in its doctrines himself.
Blasphemy
What truly amazes – it might almost be termed a miracle – is how Trump, whose countenance during religious services at the White House is one of ineffable boredom, has got away with it.
Who can forget the accidentally hilarious TV interview Trump gave during his first run for the presidency?
He was asked by a serious-looking fellow: ‘You’ve been talking about how the Bible is your favourite book and I’m wondering what one or two of your favourite Bible verses are and why?’
Trump flailed: ‘I wouldn’t want to get into that, it’s very personal’. Pushed further, he floundered: ‘The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.’
Trying to help the presidential candidate out, a second interviewer asked: ‘Are you an Old Testament guy, or New Testament?’ A look of perplexity crossed Trump’s face as he struggled to remember which is which, and then came up with: ‘Probably . . . equal!’
President Trump, who sat in the front row of hundreds of foreign dignitaries and royalty, wore a mid-blue outfit, adorned with a pin showing the American flag
The strict dress code for the event at the Vatican dictated that men should wear a dark suit with a long black tie and white shirt. Shoes, long socks, coats and umbrellas also had to be black
When I asked a friend of mine who has had dealings with the President if it could possibly be true that Trump is a religious man, he replied: ‘I don’t know if Donald believes in God, but I’m sure he thinks God believes in him.’
This came across in the wake of the assassination attempt in which Trump was wounded last summer, after which he declared: ‘My faith took on new meaning on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, where I was knocked to the ground, essentially by what seemed like a supernatural hand.’ Actually, it was his security detail who did that.
And, in what some might see as a form of blasphemy, Trump shared on his Truth Social account, and played at his rallies, a video which suggested he is some sort of Messiah: ‘And on June 14, 1946 [the day of his birth], God looked down on his planned Paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God gave us Trump.’
Some evangelicals have recoiled from Trump’s lurid personal history, conviction for sexual assault in a civil case, and monstrous narcissism – such as one who wrote: ‘I have no idea how a man with such an intense lack of integrity and respect is the figurehead of a larger movement claiming to bring God back to America.’
I am not a Christian. But I do know that care for the weakest is at the heart of its message. Trump, however, is disgusted by the weak and disabled.
This was made clear by the President’s nephew Fred C. Trump, who, in his book All In The Family, describes how during a discussion about Fred’s son William, who has a rare genetic disability, Trump sighed: ‘Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.’
Yet there is a national leader whose actions are infinitely wickeder than anything Trump has done, who also postures as a devoted Christian and is similarly seen by many in his country as sent by God. His name is Vladimir Putin.
Narcissism
The mass murderer in the Kremlin is ostentatious about his Russian Orthodox faith, and explicitly links it with his war on Ukraine. He refers to ‘historic Rus’, a state which had its origins in Kyiv in the 9th century and provides the basis of Putin’s view that a Ukraine independent of Moscow is a metaphysical monstrosity.
This is actually a religiously framed front for the re-establishment of the Soviet empire, whose dissolution this former KGB officer had described as ‘the greatest tragedy of the [20th] century’.
That had been an atheist state: the Communist regime, in its first few decades in power demolished churches across its vast territories and executed countless thousands of priests.
But when the Germans (whom Stalin had regarded as allies) invaded the USSR in 1941, the Soviet dictator cynically rehabilitated the Church as a means of uniting the country.
Putin has found in Patriarch Kirill (head of the Russian Orthodox Church and himself thought to have been a KGB agent) a vital ally in his war
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky meets Donald Trump at St Peter’s Basilica on Saturday
Putin has found in Patriarch Kirill (head of the Russian Orthodox Church and himself thought to have been a KGB agent) a vital ally in his war, which both refer to as a repeat of the anti-fascist ‘Great Patriotic War’ of 1941-1945.
In a sermon, Kirill declared of the Ukrainians whose defence has been funded by Western nations: ‘Once again the enemy takes up arms against Holy Rus.’ Kirill also extolled Putin as ‘sent by God’. Perhaps the despot himself has come to believe this, just as Trump’s ‘Christian nationalist’ base do of their own purported political miracle-worker.
As Alexander J. Motyl, author of Why Empires Reemerge, wrote: ‘Putin almost surely doesn’t believe in God… but blasphemy is not a hard sell for an old KGB hand, and delusion is right up the alley for a tyrant who has held power for 25 years.
‘Ancient emperors regularly believed in their own divinity, so why not Putin? He fashions himself as the saviour of Russia and the world. He’s never wrong. He has a coterie of apostles. Russians worship him.’
Delusion
The truth, in a religious setting, was best expressed in a sermon by Father Marcus Walker at St Bartholomew the Great, the oldest parish church in London, when he declared the supposedly Christian Orthodox Putin ‘has unleashed unimaginable death and destruction on a Christian Orthodox nation’.
That was in March 2022. Since then, among the churches Putin’s missiles have demolished are the Cathedrals of St Michael the Archangel and of St Nicholas in Mariupol, the Dormition Cathedral in Kharkiv, the Church of the Ascension in Lukianivka and St Catherine’s Church in Chernihiv.
Most recently, on Palm Sunday, Putin sent two missiles – the second, a ‘double tap’ to target the rescuers – murdering 35 people in Sumy, eastern Ukraine. Among the buildings hit was a bakery where the traditional Easter cakes were being prepared for collection.
And what was the reaction from the President of the United States to this atrocity? The equivalent of a shrug: ‘I was told they made a mistake.’
Later that day, Trump callously remarked (repeating his falsehood that the victims were the authors of their own suffering): ‘You shouldn’t start a war with someone who’s 20 times your size.’
The most disturbing aspect of all this is that Trump admires Putin precisely because of the Russian’s ruthlessness and success in destroying all his rivals.
Trump, admittedly, does not use poison or bombs in the same endeavour. But the fact he is regarded as some sort of Messiah by his supporters makes America, even more than Russia, seem a nation governed by delusion.
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