Hence a look at the role and response of the Catholic Church in the Trump era in the United States and Italian fascism from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s.
There are, of course, differences.
But given the current situation – an authoritarian president attacks democracy at home and wages war abroad – it is helpful to look at some of the similarities.
Relations between the Vatican and the Church in Italy and the Mussolini regime have passed through many phases. Only a few Catholics protested against the arrests and murders of socialist and communist dissidents by the black shirts in the early stages of fascism.
Only a few were shocked when the People's Party was banned and its founder, Father Luigi Sturzo, fled into exile in 1924.
The creeping totalitarianism, which became visible in 1925 and 1926 – anti-fascist parties were abolished, the freedom of the press suppressed – did not fail the negotiations on the Lateran Treaty of 1929. In fact, some of these illiberal measures were in line with positions that Pius IX had represented in his "Syllabus Errorum" (1864).
Tensions arose in 1931, when the Church's fascist education policy was seen as an interference with her freedom to regulate her affairs herself.
But the colonial wars that Mussolini began in East Africa from 1935 sparked enthusiasm among Italian Catholics, because they saw in the new Italian imperialism an opportunity for the mission and the enlargement of the Church.
The racist laws that Mussolini took over from Nazi Germany in 1938 did not trigger a serious alarm in the Italian Church; but caused a change of mind against racist ideologies in the last months of Pius XI's life. The Vatican and the Italian bishops did not turn against fascism until the war for Germany and Italy was slowly going badly.
After 1942, Pius XII gave the first speeches in favor of human rights and democracy, and Catholics prepared for the post-fascism period. The Vatican recognized that the regime that had protected the Church from communism and chaos had given the Pope the Vatican state and secured the Church a privileged status has now posed an existential threat to Catholicism and the papacy.
The Vatican has not been a sovereign, independent state under international law for so long.
That it continued to exist was by no means guaranteed if Russians or Americans in a post-war order had not been willing or able to continue to pass the agreement on the "Roman question" of 1929.
Mussolini and the fascism allied with the Nazis had now become a burden of an advantage.
Better than the alternative?
If you put the attack on the U.S. Capitol on 6. January 2021 next to the early Mussolini years, it turns out: It is about the instincts of a strong man. Just as Catholics in Italy accepted Mussolini, Catholics in the U.S. saw Trump as "better than the alternative" that would have been an enemy of the church.
The first months of the second Trump presidency were comparable to 1938: racist, anti-immigrant measures did not seem to directly threaten the Church. Then ICE went to Minneapolis at the end of 2025.
The following three months of state-sponsored terror – together with the war-like, expansionist statements about Greenland, the military action in Venezuela and the illegal war against Iran – were a wake-up call for many bishops.
Cardinals Cupich, McElroy and Tobin made public comments in a joint statement in January on ICE and on morale of U.S. foreign policy, while military bishop Timothy Broglio spoke out against the immorality of an attack on Greenland.
In the second year of the second Trump reign, more individual bishops, as is the U.S. Bishops’ Conference (USCCB), albeit more diplomatically, has taken legal action to counter Trump’s policies, and made public statements to distance itself from the regime. It's not that the USCCB would have become more liberal or the Democrats more well-liked.
Many bishops have simply realized that, given the collapse of church attendees among immigrants and the violation of religious freedom, Trump is bad for the Church. They have also realised that Trump is bad for world peace, with the war against Iran tragically confirming the arguments the three cardinals had brought in January.
Santa Fes Archbishop John Wester declared in late February that one lives in "a Dietrich-Bonhoeffer moment." Some bishops may do. Others seem to be in a Karl Barth moment: to continue praying and doing God's work without taking a public stand.
And still others don't seem to have wavered in their support for the Trump administration -- or at least they don't seem particularly anxious to push USCCB President Paul Coakley to publicly challenge the president.
Nor has the bishops' conference commented on the government's attacks on democracy and the rule of law. One possible explanation: One knows about the government's power of disposal over federal funds for students at Catholic colleges and universities, as well as visa rules for church employees with a migrant background.
There are also some influential bishops in Trump's presidential commission on religious freedom who have not shown themselves particularly dissatisfied with the current state of affairs.
And although there may be a number of individual statements on social teaching and Trumpism (especially in terms of immigration), there is no clear and unanimous consensus on Catholic teaching, democracy and constitutionalism. (This is in stark contrast to the clear statements made by European bishops’ conferences in recent years.)
The leadership of the Catholic Church in the U.S. no longer seems ready (or willing) to talk about the future of democracy after Trump. A first step would be to detach the Church from Trumpism – not only in the eyes of the American people, but worldwide – for the sake of the credibility of Catholicism.
What happened after the Second World War – when the Catholic Church in Europe gained unexpected political significance thanks to the Cold War – is unlikely to repeat itself in the twenty-first century.
The clergy's silence on Trumpism could lead to a de facto fusion of US Catholicism with Trump's Christian-nationalist movement. Avoiding that will require more than opinions from individual bishops or cardinals, or legal action by the USCCB.
(It should also be noted that the religious undertones of the Trump propaganda machine damage the moral position of American Christianity, and American Catholics should not assume that people in other parts of the world can distinguish the different currents of American Christianity and Catholicism.)
A response by the bishops to Trumpism, which goes beyond immigration and foreign policy, would also serve U.S.-born Pope Leo XIV. As the pope made clear in an interview six months ago, he wants to avoid American party politics and let the bishops speak. In that interview, Leo said President Trump had "at times made it clear" that issues of human dignity and promotion of peace were important to him, and that "I want to support him in these efforts."
That seems a long time ago by now, and Leo seems to be aware of how much things have changed since then. There is no doubt that Rome and the Pope – quietly but clearly – support the individual voices who prophetically denounce Trumpism. The question is whether others will join these individual voices or whether they remain a (shrinking) minority faction.
There are further signs of Leo's awareness and his assessment of the situation in the United States, including indirect gestures such as the decision, on the 4th. Juli Lampedusa to visit. In addition, there is the appointment of Gabriele Caccia as Apostolic Nuncio in the United States, replacing Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who emeritus.
This signals that the United States under Trump is an international issue for the Vatican. Caccia, who has served as the Holy See's ambassador to the United Nations since 2019, arrives at a delicate moment: the tension that had shaped the U.S. bishops' relationship with Francis has been replaced by a tension between the Vatican Leos XIV and a Trump-led Americanism that uses Christian-nationalist rhetoric while waging war on an Islamic country.
While the first two Gulf Wars had a catastrophic impact on relations between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East and on Christianity itself in the region, the two Bush presidents tried to scale back undertones in the Crusader manner.
Complex international relations
The attempt to portray the current war as one against "a misguided religion" is an integral part of the Trump administration's narrative.
In addition, Trump and the United States worked with Israel in the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was also the head of a religious tradition with which the Vatican maintains formal interreligious relations (not to mention that the Vatican and Iran have maintained diplomatic relations since 1954, that is, thirty years longer than the Vatican and the United States). This is also a reason to draw parallels with the challenges to which Pius XII faced in the Second World War.
And what about the response to the current variety of Trumpism among other prominent American Catholics – including those associated with institutions in Rome and having sources of funding in the United States? Consider, for example, that Peter Thiel gave lectures on the “anti-Christ” in Rome.
The event was organized by the "Associazione Culturale Vincenzo Gioberti" in Italy and the "Cluny Institute" of the Catholic University of America (the "investment philosophy" of Cluny reads: "We invest in people who combine intellectual rigour with spiritual depth and creativity, at the intersection of Athens, Jerusalem and Silicon Valley"). The Italian Catholic newspaper "Avvenire" (which is published by the Italian bishops) has described Thiel as "the heart of the darkness of the digital world."
During fascism, the Vatican was able to take care of the Italian Church, not least because there was also an Italian pope. Yet Italy was not the political and military (or even religious) superpower that is the United States.
And the papacy today will not be able to provide the same protection to America or the international standing of U.S. Catholicism. In fact, it could be the U.S. bishops and influential Catholics who must protect the pontificate of Leo XIV from an identification of American Christianity with Trumpism.
The Pope should not have to bear that responsibility.
And it would be far more helpful than the current crowdfunding campaign to give Leo – who has never made a secret of his closeness to the poor – a new papal tiara.