Tobin Harshaw, Columnist

Populism vs. the Pope Is No Contest

As Trump mistakes the pope’s pleas for peace as a declaration of war, Europe’s populist wave is breaking.

April 19, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC

Tobin Harshaw is a Bloomberg Opinion senior editor and columnist on national security and military affairs. Previously, he was deputy editor at the op-ed page of the New York Times and the newspaper’s letters editor.

No term limits for this guy: Pope Leo XIV waves to the crowd in Douala, Cameroon, April 17, 2026.
Photographer: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

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The Donald Trump administration has a curious relationship with religion. The president has variously described himself as a Presbyterian, a nondenominational Christian and a follower of that paragon of positive thinking, Norman Vincent Peale. He can profess all the religions he wants, Americans aren’t putting much stock in his religiosity.