I don't think that pacifism is popular, nor has it ever been more than a fringe belief. I certainly don't think that Pope Leo's statements somehow amount to a call for pacifism.
The Christian understanding of the Just War is I think a matter of close agreement in ecumenical discussions between Catholics and Anglicans. IIRC it has always been seen as a matter of very last resort.
It’s therefore not a surprise that Trump’s attack has at its root the assertion of the threat of imminent possession of nuclear weapons. Against like the lie about WMD in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
His calling out corruption and tyrants in Africa is pretty brave.
He's not going to make any African leadership friends with that kind of talk. He probably wont be invited back anytime soon.
He is bringing attention to a separatist crisis in Cameroon that is largely being ignored by the rest of the world and in need of a voice crying for peace. This background helps to inform the meaning of the full text of his remarks.
I find that I prefer to read the full text in context rather than only view selected comments through the prism of the news media.
I don't think that pacifism is popular, nor has it ever been more than a fringe belief. I certainly don't think that Pope Leo's statements somehow amount to a call for pacifism.
As a life-long pacifist, I can tell you it's very much a fringe belief! And I would never mistake the pope for a pacifist. The US Catholic Bishops have explained how Pope Leo's statement is well within just war theory (Vatican News site).
My feeling is that he's just doing what Pope's do (see language JPII used on Iraq), but it's coming across stronger because he's speaking in English with the immediacy of social media.
Yes, absolutely. He's speaking in English and is a native speaker of English, and he's American-born -- everything he says hits harder in the US than stuff previous popes have said, because we can't say maybe he really meant something a little different or that he doesn't get what's going on here. He's a boomer white guy with a favorite baseball team. We feel like we know who he is, so we feel like he knows who we are.
I don't think that pacifism is popular, nor has it ever been more than a fringe belief. I certainly don't think that Pope Leo's statements somehow amount to a call for pacifism.
Not sure, I do not have the evidence to support it, but my feeling is that Pacificism in the UK between the two World Wars was still a minority held belief but an influential one. It is probably not what we think of as Pacifism today. It has quite a strong association with left wing politics but also was strongly held in the Church, including the work Dick Shepherd's Peace Pledge Union.
His calling out corruption and tyrants in Africa is pretty brave.
He's not going to make any African leadership friends with that kind of talk. He probably wont be invited back anytime soon.
He is bringing attention to a separatist crisis in Cameroon that is largely being ignored by the rest of the world and in need of a voice crying for peace. This background helps to inform the meaning of the full text of his remarks.
I find that I prefer to read the full text in context rather than only view selected comments through the prism of the news media.
I agree. Thank you for the link.
But he's still being brave. Nobody knows who he is telling off.
I don't think that pacifism is popular, nor has it ever been more than a fringe belief. I certainly don't think that Pope Leo's statements somehow amount to a call for pacifism.
As a life-long pacifist, I can tell you it's very much a fringe belief! And I would never mistake the pope for a pacifist. The US Catholic Bishops have explained how Pope Leo's statement is well within just war theory (Vatican News site).
My feeling is that he's just doing what Pope's do (see language JPII used on Iraq), but it's coming across stronger because he's speaking in English with the immediacy of social media.
Yes, absolutely. He's speaking in English and is a native speaker of English, and he's American-born -- everything he says hits harder in the US than stuff previous popes have said, because we can't say maybe he really meant something a little different or that he doesn't get what's going on here. He's a boomer white guy with a favorite baseball team. We feel like we know who he is, so we feel like he knows who we are.
That Vatican news site doesn't really say anything about who he is directing his comments to in terms of justice.
Perhaps the mainstream media is just picking up the peace flag and ignoring the justice issue or maybe he has said something about justice and peace and they haven't picked it up.
Sounds like a bit of administration backpedaling to me.
I suspect it is rather that when the Pope, or for that matter, any other Christian leader sets out publicly what most people know is standard, basic and more or less unanimously held Christian teaching, those public figures who ought to feel guilty protest in proportion to the guilt they ought to feel.
I suspect it is rather that when the Pope, or for that matter, any other Christian leader sets out publicly what most people know is standard, basic and more or less unanimously held Christian teaching, those public figures who ought to feel guilty protest in proportion to the guilt they ought to feel.
Tucker Carlson is now crowing that Leo One Four is more popular in the polls than Trump. But to put that in some possibly relevant context, some time in the last year or so I saw a poll saying the only politicians in the USA with approval ratings above-water were Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Bernie Sanders. Everyone else, including Trump, was in the negatives.
Tucker Carlson is now crowing that Leo One Four is more popular in the polls than Trump. But to put that in some possibly relevant context, some time in the last year or so I saw a poll saying the only politicians in the USA with approval ratings above-water were Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Bernie Sanders. Everyone else, including Trump, was in the negatives.
Might want to check this. I think Gavin Newsom and Mark Kelly were in positive territories too, though not as high as the pope.
Tucker Carlson is now crowing that Leo One Four is more popular in the polls than Trump. But to put that in some possibly relevant context, some time in the last year or so I saw a poll saying the only politicians in the USA with approval ratings above-water were Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Bernie Sanders. Everyone else, including Trump, was in the negatives.
Might want to check this. I think Gavin Newsom and Mark Kelly were in positive territories too, though not as high as the pope.
Yeah, that's probably a different poll, and things can really vary with this sorta thing. Main point is, I wouldn't neccessarily interpret "[Some politician] is more popular than Trump in a poll, therefore that politician is well-positioned in a public fight with Trump over specific issues."
I didn't actually access the poll that TC was citing, but if it was a binary question like "Who do you like better, Trump or Leo?", there might be more significance to it, since the respondent will be prompted to think about the comparisons between those two people in particular, likely focused on current issues between them. But even then, there's still gonna be a faction of the pro-Leo camp who are basically just pissed off about Trump's currently shambolic economic mismanagement, with the Strait Of Hormuz their Exhibit A, and figure that if the Pope's against that goddam shitshow, well, hey, let's drink a round to the Pope.
The NYT has a piece up about how Leo XIV is supposedly miffed that his comments in Africa were misinterpreted by the global media as being directed against Trump, when in fact they were about African affairs and had been prepared prior to his spat with the POTUS.
The article cited at least one academic as not buying Leo's disclaimer, saying that after the spat started, he should have re-written his comments if he was worried they'd be mistakenly seen as anti-Trump.
So as not to be a conduit for misinformation, I wrote this a few days back...
See Tucker Carlson for an example of a devout Catholic who hates the war, hates the advisers who he thinks pushed Trump into it, might possibly also hate Trump for listening to those advisers, but will not likely ever vote Democratic for any reason.
Not that every single antiwar Catholic is Tucker Carlson, just an example of how it's more complicated than simply saying "There are X number of Catholics in the USA, and the Pope is now antiwar, therefore...".
Just found out the other day that TC has not(yet?) swum the Tiber, and is still, as far as I can glean, an Episcopalian.
Furthermore, the FATIMA poster displayed from a visually incomplete angle in his studio is NOT refering to Our Lady Of..., but rather to a discontinued brand of American cigarettes. But the box features a Crusaders' cross on one side of "FATIMA" and a Crescent-Moon/Star on the other, so I gotta think he can at least see the implications(*).
(*) Carlson recently offended some fundies by wading into the "Do Muslims venerate Jesus?" debate on the affirmative side. I'm personally inclined to draw some conclusions about what sorta coalition he's hoping to rally.
In The Guardian, Clinton-era grandee Sidney Blumenthal has a really over-wrought hymn to Pope Leo's allegedly anti-Trump crusade. The title is "Trump cannot bear the judgement of Pope Leo".
Opening line:
Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?
And it only gets more grandiloquent, and symbolically incoherent, from there.
Like Lucifer, the protagonist of John Milton's Paradise Lost, refusing to accept his status, Trump rebels against Heaven itself.
As if Trump had a political obligation to obey the Pope analagous to Lucifer's obligation to obey God in Heaven.
Also, while I realize that, at the level of the individual character, an analogy CAN be transfered from one political situation to another...
...explicitly using the hero of the ultimate Puritan morality-tale as a stand-in for a Pope(whom he has also just compared to Thomas a Becket), is a little...off. Especially given that "Lucifer rebelled against Heaven" is widely recognized as a story apart from its usage in Pardadise Lost, so he coulda just said that.
The piece does have a fairly handy summation of the whole controversy between Trump and Leo, and how the various surrounding issues come into play. But it otherwise really just comes off as heaping praise on someone, because they happen to be the most high-profile critic right now of the politician you oppose the most.
The NYT has a piece up about how Leo XIV is supposedly miffed that his comments in Africa were misinterpreted by the global media as being directed against Trump, when in fact they were about African affairs and had been prepared prior to his spat with the POTUS.
The article cited at least one academic as not buying Leo's disclaimer, saying that after the spat started, he should have re-written his comments if he was worried they'd be mistakenly seen as anti-Trump.
Interesting. But I'm not surprised. Anything for click bait.
No mention in the media of Leo referring to Ukraine laying down arms. Wouldn't sell. Says something.
Personally I thought there was rather more to it than kissing the Pope’s ass because he didn’t kiss Trump’s.
For me, I think it was really just his clashing historical metaphors made me think he was latching onto a tradition he doesn't really understand. Even without the Puritan overlay of Paradise Lost, the War in Heaven is a pretty bad analogy for a disagreement between an American president and a Pope.
In my case it included some useful information of which I was not aware.
As I said, it was a good summation of the overall controversy. Blumenthal shoulda just focused on that, rather than trying to shoehorn everything into the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket and then Paradise Lost.
As a matter of curiosity, does any shipmate happen to know whether Pope Leo is still a US citizen?
And would there be any issue under US law about a citizen becoming a foreign head of state? Or would a US citizen be required in such event to renounce citizenship? What would the implications be for the US rule, either unique or almost so, that even if a citizen is resident somewhere else, he or she remains liable for US taxes on their worldwide income?
As far as I know, the pope is still an American citizen. He was a citizen when elected pope, and his election did not, as I understand it, automatically require loss of his citizenship.
What was reported at the time was the State Department reviews questions of citizenship for those who hold higher positions in foreign governments on a case by case basis. And it didn’t appear that such review is automatic.
The NYT has a piece up about how Leo XIV is supposedly miffed that his comments in Africa were misinterpreted by the global media as being directed against Trump, when in fact they were about African affairs and had been prepared prior to his spat with the POTUS.
The article cited at least one academic as not buying Leo's disclaimer, saying that after the spat started, he should have re-written his comments if he was worried they'd be mistakenly seen as anti-Trump.
Interesting. But I'm not surprised. Anything for click bait.
No mention in the media of Leo referring to Ukraine laying down arms. Wouldn't sell. Says something.
The comments I saw had Leo explicitly saying that he was praying for the Ukrainian people, without mentioning any other parties, before diving into a general call for laying down arms.
So, hinting at a pro-Ukraine position, followed by vague pacifism. I'll agree it wasn't a particularly ferocious denunciation either way.
The NYT has a piece up about how Leo XIV is supposedly miffed that his comments in Africa were misinterpreted by the global media as being directed against Trump, when in fact they were about African affairs and had been prepared prior to his spat with the POTUS.
Okay, but the bulk of reported comments were prior to that trip as the article itself concedes:
Leo’s remarks in Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea were almost drowned out by his comments on the first flight of the trip, when he responded to a diatribe about him Mr. Trump posted on social media after the pope spoke out repeatedly against the war in Iran. Leo told the reporters traveling with him that he had “no fear” of the Trump administration.
Further
Speaking to reporters on the plane home on Thursday, Leo also continued to criticize the war in Iran, lamenting that the conflict had caused “the death of so many innocents.”
So no succour to those who want to 'play down' the conflict and pretend there's less of a gap than there is, including in this case the Grey Lady -- as I said somewhere else, the tenor of the Pope's remarks were very much in keeping with what one can expect from the Vatican.
The NYT has a piece up about how Leo XIV is supposedly miffed that his comments in Africa were misinterpreted by the global media as being directed against Trump, when in fact they were about African affairs and had been prepared prior to his spat with the POTUS.
Okay, but the bulk of reported comments were prior to that trip as the article itself concedes:
Leo’s remarks in Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea were almost drowned out by his comments on the first flight of the trip, when he responded to a diatribe about him Mr. Trump posted on social media after the pope spoke out repeatedly against the war in Iran. Leo told the reporters traveling with him that he had “no fear” of the Trump administration.
Further
Speaking to reporters on the plane home on Thursday, Leo also continued to criticize the war in Iran, lamenting that the conflict had caused “the death of so many innocents.”
So no succour to those who want to 'play down' the conflict and pretend there's less of a gap than there is, including in this case the Grey Lady -- as I said somewhere else, the tenor of the Pope's remarks were very much in keeping with what one can expect from the Vatican.
As a matter of curiosity, does any shipmate happen to know whether Pope Leo is still a US citizen?
And would there be any issue under US law about a citizen becoming a foreign head of state? Or would a US citizen be required in such event to renounce citizenship? What would the implications be for the US rule, either unique or almost so, that even if a citizen is resident somewhere else, he or she remains liable for US taxes on their worldwide income?
About a year ago, the AP discussed the issue. As far as I know, he currently remains a citizen. That might change in the future.
What would the implications be for the US rule, either unique or almost so, that even if a citizen is resident somewhere else, he or she remains liable for US taxes on their worldwide income?
So now I have done some research on this. Saying a United States citizen “remains liable for US taxes on their worldwide income” isn’t quite accurate.
US citizens living and working outside the US are required to file returns reporting their income, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will owe taxes on the income they report. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, credits for income taxes paid to the country of residence, and available exclusions or deductions for housing costs generally mean that most US citizens living and working outside the US don’t actually owe any federal income taxes.
I thought Roman Catholic priests basically had an allowance (not a stipend) with the Church responsible for a lot more of the expenditure that is part of their ministry. The Pope's actual personal budget (allowance) he controls might well be smaller than most parish priest's. All his food is provided by the vatican, his clothes bought by them. He may have to order personal wash things and books maybe even some money for personal charitable giving or to buy presents but beyond that...
I thought Roman Catholic priests basically had an allowance (not a stipend) with the Church responsible for a lot more of the expenditure that is part of their ministry. The Pope's actual personal budget (allowance) he controls might well be smaller than most parish priest's. All his food is provided by the vatican, his clothes bought by them. He may have to order personal wash things and books maybe even some money for personal charitable giving or to buy presents but beyond that...
Yeah, like priests the Pope is given an allowance, but Francis - for instance - chose not to take it.
As a matter of curiosity, does any shipmate happen to know whether Pope Leo is still a US citizen?
And would there be any issue under US law about a citizen becoming a foreign head of state? Or would a US citizen be required in such event to renounce citizenship? What would the implications be for the US rule, either unique or almost so, that even if a citizen is resident somewhere else, he or she remains liable for US taxes on their worldwide income?
About a year ago, the AP discussed the issue. As far as I know, he currently remains a citizen. That might change in the future.
Pope Leo is a citizen of three countries. He is a natural born American citizen. He will remain an American citizen unless he renounces it. He became a citizen of Peru in 2015 after decades of missionary work. When he became pope he became the head of the Vatican City State.
Another question is whether Leo would have diplomatic immunity if he visited the US given he is still a US ciitzen?
My guess is that if one wanted to be picky, it would depend on the capacity in which he visited the US. At one end of the spectrum, if his visit was solely in his capacity as sovereign of Vatican City State, then I suspect he would clearly have diplomatic immunity. At the end other end of the spectrum, if his visit was solely in a private capacity (so to visit family), the I suspect he might not.
Of course, the likelihood that any visit to the US might be solely in a personal capacity or solely in his capacity as sovereign of Vatican City State seems pretty small, because whatever he does, he’s the pope. It seems highly unlikely that any visit, including a primarily personal one, would not involve carrying out some papal duties.
As a practical matter, I have a hard time imagining any law enforcement agency doing anything other than assuming diplomatic immunity. And I have a hard time imagining breaking of laws that would require the need to figure it out to start with.
Trump has unilaterally revived the spat with Leo, this time co-inciding with Rubio's supposed fence-mending mission in Rome.
With the caveat that I still think this overall dispute is of minimal consequence, if my choices are between Trump trying to do a good-cop/bad-cop routine with Rubio, OR Trump just randomly spouting off with no regard for the positional convenience of his underlings, I'd give it about even odds. Though even the first, more charitable interpretation doesn't necessarily mean he's doing it competently.
When the Pope is appointing bishops that oppose Trump's positions in Washington DC and Florida, what do you expect?
Have these bishops spoken out on Trump's foreign-policy, though? The comments from Trump that I saw today were focused on that, specifically the accusation that Leo XIV thinks it's okay for Iran to have nukes.
A friend's partner runs a BC-based accounting firm specializing in the tax affairs of US citizens or dual citizens resident in Canada. I gave him a call to pick his brains on: a) good BC wines to recommend to a diplomatic friend, and (just incidentally): b) should Pope Leo file. He thought so, but papal accountants (surely the Papal Almoner, or perhaps the Treasurer of the Pontifical Throne, with amaranth fascias) might argue that the salary of a head of state would not be taxable, sovereign immunity and all that. He thought that any stole fees which might come his way would be taxable (he has seen them entered as income on clerical returns) but any amount payable would depend on his charitable donations. He plans to open a bottle of something with a few of his fellow RC ;international accountants on some rainy afternoon to pursue these issues.
Funny story about the Pope. After he got elected, a certain customer service agent got a call from a Robert Prevost who was trying to change his address. Robert answered all the security questions, but the clerk got a notification that said this client had to show his ID. The agent apologized for not being able to complete the request, but Prevost asked. "Does it matter if I told you I am the Pope? The agent hung up on him. https://brobible.com/culture/article/pope-leo-bank-customer-service-agent-story/
Funny story about the Pope. After he got elected, a certain customer service agent got a call from a Robert Prevost who was trying to change his address. Robert answered all the security questions, but the clerk got a notification that said this client had to show his ID. The agent apologized for not being able to complete the request, but Prevost asked. "Does it matter if I told you I am the Pope? The agent hung up on him. https://brobible.com/culture/article/pope-leo-bank-customer-service-agent-story/
I like to think I would have answered that question with a calm "No".
As a practical matter, I have a hard time imagining any law enforcement agency doing anything other than assuming diplomatic immunity. And I have a hard time imagining breaking of laws that would require the need to figure it out to start with.
On the flip side, in the event that the US decided to arrest a sitting pope I can't see niceties like 'diplomatic immunity' getting in the way.
Not long after he was elected, a couple spotted a man walking on the other side of the road. ‘Darling, the wife says, ‘isn’t that Leo, the new pope? It certainly looks like him’. ‘I’ll go and ask him’, her husband replies. This he does and goes back to his wife. ‘Well, she asks, ‘what did he say?’ ‘He told me to b*gg*r off’, he tells her. The wife thinks about this, ‘Oh dear, she says, 'now we’ll never know’.
Comments
It’s therefore not a surprise that Trump’s attack has at its root the assertion of the threat of imminent possession of nuclear weapons. Against like the lie about WMD in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
He is bringing attention to a separatist crisis in Cameroon that is largely being ignored by the rest of the world and in need of a voice crying for peace. This background helps to inform the meaning of the full text of his remarks.
I find that I prefer to read the full text in context rather than only view selected comments through the prism of the news media.
As a life-long pacifist, I can tell you it's very much a fringe belief! And I would never mistake the pope for a pacifist. The US Catholic Bishops have explained how Pope Leo's statement is well within just war theory (Vatican News site).
Yes, absolutely. He's speaking in English and is a native speaker of English, and he's American-born -- everything he says hits harder in the US than stuff previous popes have said, because we can't say maybe he really meant something a little different or that he doesn't get what's going on here. He's a boomer white guy with a favorite baseball team. We feel like we know who he is, so we feel like he knows who we are.
Not sure, I do not have the evidence to support it, but my feeling is that Pacificism in the UK between the two World Wars was still a minority held belief but an influential one. It is probably not what we think of as Pacifism today. It has quite a strong association with left wing politics but also was strongly held in the Church, including the work Dick Shepherd's Peace Pledge Union.
I agree. Thank you for the link.
But he's still being brave. Nobody knows who he is telling off.
That Vatican news site doesn't really say anything about who he is directing his comments to in terms of justice.
Perhaps the mainstream media is just picking up the peace flag and ignoring the justice issue or maybe he has said something about justice and peace and they haven't picked it up.
Sounds like a bit of administration backpedaling to me.
In that vein, I share this meme.
No doubt, the meme is AI generated, I cannot say with one, since I was not the creator of it.
Might want to check this. I think Gavin Newsom and Mark Kelly were in positive territories too, though not as high as the pope.
Yeah, that's probably a different poll, and things can really vary with this sorta thing. Main point is, I wouldn't neccessarily interpret "[Some politician] is more popular than Trump in a poll, therefore that politician is well-positioned in a public fight with Trump over specific issues."
I didn't actually access the poll that TC was citing, but if it was a binary question like "Who do you like better, Trump or Leo?", there might be more significance to it, since the respondent will be prompted to think about the comparisons between those two people in particular, likely focused on current issues between them. But even then, there's still gonna be a faction of the pro-Leo camp who are basically just pissed off about Trump's currently shambolic economic mismanagement, with the Strait Of Hormuz their Exhibit A, and figure that if the Pope's against that goddam shitshow, well, hey, let's drink a round to the Pope.
The article cited at least one academic as not buying Leo's disclaimer, saying that after the spat started, he should have re-written his comments if he was worried they'd be mistakenly seen as anti-Trump.
Just found out the other day that TC has not(yet?) swum the Tiber, and is still, as far as I can glean, an Episcopalian.
Furthermore, the FATIMA poster displayed from a visually incomplete angle in his studio is NOT refering to Our Lady Of..., but rather to a discontinued brand of American cigarettes. But the box features a Crusaders' cross on one side of "FATIMA" and a Crescent-Moon/Star on the other, so I gotta think he can at least see the implications(*).
(*) Carlson recently offended some fundies by wading into the "Do Muslims venerate Jesus?" debate on the affirmative side. I'm personally inclined to draw some conclusions about what sorta coalition he's hoping to rally.
Opening line:
And it only gets more grandiloquent, and symbolically incoherent, from there.
As if Trump had a political obligation to obey the Pope analagous to Lucifer's obligation to obey God in Heaven.
Also, while I realize that, at the level of the individual character, an analogy CAN be transfered from one political situation to another...
...explicitly using the hero of the ultimate Puritan morality-tale as a stand-in for a Pope(whom he has also just compared to Thomas a Becket), is a little...off. Especially given that "Lucifer rebelled against Heaven" is widely recognized as a story apart from its usage in Pardadise Lost, so he coulda just said that.
The piece does have a fairly handy summation of the whole controversy between Trump and Leo, and how the various surrounding issues come into play. But it otherwise really just comes off as heaping praise on someone, because they happen to be the most high-profile critic right now of the politician you oppose the most.
Personally I thought there was rather more to it than kissing the Pope’s ass because he didn’t kiss Trump’s.
But YMMV. In my case it included some useful information of which I was not aware.
Interesting. But I'm not surprised. Anything for click bait.
No mention in the media of Leo referring to Ukraine laying down arms. Wouldn't sell. Says something.
Thanks!
For me, I think it was really just his clashing historical metaphors made me think he was latching onto a tradition he doesn't really understand. Even without the Puritan overlay of Paradise Lost, the War in Heaven is a pretty bad analogy for a disagreement between an American president and a Pope.
As I said, it was a good summation of the overall controversy. Blumenthal shoulda just focused on that, rather than trying to shoehorn everything into the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket and then Paradise Lost.
And would there be any issue under US law about a citizen becoming a foreign head of state? Or would a US citizen be required in such event to renounce citizenship? What would the implications be for the US rule, either unique or almost so, that even if a citizen is resident somewhere else, he or she remains liable for US taxes on their worldwide income?
What was reported at the time was the State Department reviews questions of citizenship for those who hold higher positions in foreign governments on a case by case basis. And it didn’t appear that such review is automatic.
As for taxes, I have no idea on that.
The comments I saw had Leo explicitly saying that he was praying for the Ukrainian people, without mentioning any other parties, before diving into a general call for laying down arms.
So, hinting at a pro-Ukraine position, followed by vague pacifism. I'll agree it wasn't a particularly ferocious denunciation either way.
Okay, but the bulk of reported comments were prior to that trip as the article itself concedes:
Further
So no succour to those who want to 'play down' the conflict and pretend there's less of a gap than there is, including in this case the Grey Lady -- as I said somewhere else, the tenor of the Pope's remarks were very much in keeping with what one can expect from the Vatican.
Fair points.
About a year ago, the AP discussed the issue. As far as I know, he currently remains a citizen. That might change in the future.
US citizens living and working outside the US are required to file returns reporting their income, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will owe taxes on the income they report. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, credits for income taxes paid to the country of residence, and available exclusions or deductions for housing costs generally mean that most US citizens living and working outside the US don’t actually owe any federal income taxes.
I thought Roman Catholic priests basically had an allowance (not a stipend) with the Church responsible for a lot more of the expenditure that is part of their ministry. The Pope's actual personal budget (allowance) he controls might well be smaller than most parish priest's. All his food is provided by the vatican, his clothes bought by them. He may have to order personal wash things and books maybe even some money for personal charitable giving or to buy presents but beyond that...
Yeah, like priests the Pope is given an allowance, but Francis - for instance - chose not to take it.
Pope Leo is a citizen of three countries. He is a natural born American citizen. He will remain an American citizen unless he renounces it. He became a citizen of Peru in 2015 after decades of missionary work. When he became pope he became the head of the Vatican City State.
Pope Leo has diplomatic immunity by the virtue of being the Pope as the head of the State of Vatican City.
I am a US citizen, but I cannot claim immunity if I violate a law.
I am not expecting the Pope to intentionally break any US law if he happens to come home to the US for a visit, though.
Of course, the likelihood that any visit to the US might be solely in a personal capacity or solely in his capacity as sovereign of Vatican City State seems pretty small, because whatever he does, he’s the pope. It seems highly unlikely that any visit, including a primarily personal one, would not involve carrying out some papal duties.
As a practical matter, I have a hard time imagining any law enforcement agency doing anything other than assuming diplomatic immunity. And I have a hard time imagining breaking of laws that would require the need to figure it out to start with.
With the caveat that I still think this overall dispute is of minimal consequence, if my choices are between Trump trying to do a good-cop/bad-cop routine with Rubio, OR Trump just randomly spouting off with no regard for the positional convenience of his underlings, I'd give it about even odds. Though even the first, more charitable interpretation doesn't necessarily mean he's doing it competently.
Have these bishops spoken out on Trump's foreign-policy, though? The comments from Trump that I saw today were focused on that, specifically the accusation that Leo XIV thinks it's okay for Iran to have nukes.
I like to think I would have answered that question with a calm "No".
On the flip side, in the event that the US decided to arrest a sitting pope I can't see niceties like 'diplomatic immunity' getting in the way.