In his 2006 book The President, The Pope, and the Prime Minister, the veteran conservative journalist and former National Review editor John O’Sullivan celebrated John Paul II for helping Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher win the Cold War.
Could Pope Leo XIV help President Donald Trump bring about an end to the war in Ukraine, thereby saving countless lives and tying up some of their predecessors’ loose ends in the process? He has offered to play a key role.
It might not be so far-fetched as it first seems. Trump teased the possibility after his calls with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. “The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Let the process begin!”
Vice President J.D. Vance elaborated on this in an interview after he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had an audience with the first American pope, and he didn’t limit the possible peacemaking to Russia–Ukraine.
“We talked a lot about what’s going on in Israel and Gaza. We talked a lot about the Russia–Ukraine situation,” Vance told NBC News. “It’s hard to predict the future, but I do think that not just the pope, but the entire Vatican, has expressed a desire to be really helpful and to work together on facilitating, hopefully, a peace deal coming together in Russia and Ukraine.”
It’s a long way from Trump reposting AI-generated images of himself as the pope. Perhaps Leo is more convincing in the role of Henry Kissinger, though that comparison might be equally blasphemous.
“We have an American pope of the world’s largest single religion — a guy who doesn’t have an army, but who I think has an incredible amount of capacity to convene and to influence, not just Europe, but, really, the entire world,” Vance, who is a Catholic convert, said in his NBC interview. He told the outlet Leo “does care a lot about peace.”
“If there is a single most productive thing [from his trip to Rome], my hope is that it will be that the relationship between us and the Vatican leads to a lot fewer people getting killed and a lot less humanitarian disaster,” Vance added.
And if it came to fruition, it might be the first time a pope collaborated with a Republican administration in this way on foreign policy since the Polish-born pontiff stood in opposition to the Soviet Union in the waning years of the Cold War. John Paul II was outspoken in his opposition to the Iraq war. Some believed Leo’s mission would be to push back against Trump, much as the American Catholic bishops have clashed with Trump and Vance over immigration.
The new pope won’t do Trump’s bidding, whatever his brothers’ political affinities might be. But the world could use a little just war theory right now, and not just a thin Christian veneer on warmaking.
“The martyred Ukraine is waiting for negotiations for a just and lasting peace to finally happen,” Leo said at his inaugural Mass. He has also met with Zelensky and the Ukrainian president’s wife.
One hopes it doesn’t take a miracle to end the war in Ukraine, which is costly in its own right and puts the world at risk of a broader conflict between nuclear-armed powers. But Putin could well need divine intervention to persuade him his current course is wasteful and destructive.
Putin still seems willing to pay the costs of wearing down Ukraine’s defenses, even for the most marginal gains as his own troops suffer casualties. He might have some interest in better relations with the United States, but not enough to engage in serious peace talks yet. The Russian leader was a no-show at direct negotiations in Turkey despite Zelensky sending a top-level delegation.
Trump is still trying to get Putin to the negotiating table, as patience wears thin in a Washington driven wild by Trump-Russia talk for the past eight years. “What the president is trying to do is end a war,” Rubio said of Trump during heated testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He may need a pope and a prime minister to help him.
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