An improbable new adversary for Trump: the Catholic church

The supreme court can’t do it - it’s packed with conservatives who owe him their jobs.

- Simon Tisdall

Congress won’t do it - Republicans slavishly follow his orders, Democrats are ill-led and divided. For today’s White House, the concept of constitutional limits on executive power is a quaint relic.

The news media, or sections of it, does its best amid constant legal threats. But, too often, they pay him off. Brave reporters who insist on asking awkward questions are insulted or silenced: "Quiet, piggy."

So who will tame Donald Trump? Who will halt his rolling constitutional coup - his ongoing evisceration of US democracy, civil rights, living standards, global reputation and moral integrity? Voters may try to indirectly rein him in next November’s midterms (as they did recently in New York and elsewhere). But those elections are a year away. The emergency is today.

What the US urgently needs now, metaphorically speaking, is a national champion, a sort of modern-day Saint George to slay the dragon, save the people and ensure the triumph of good over evil. Who, in reality, might fill this role of moral saviour?

Step forward Leo XIV, the “American pope”, backed by the US conference of Catholic bishops and the clergy and grassroots activists of the Catholic church - unexpected, newly emerging standard-bearers for countrywide resistance to the Trumpist scourge. The bishops threw down the gauntlet in a “special message” this month. Inequality, immigration and civil rights are the battlegrounds on which the church, and some other Christian denominations, have begun to fight.