You come at the pope, you best not miss
Donald Trump should be thankful Pope Francis won’t go medieval on him
Pope Francis isn’t happy. He told off Donald Trump in front of reporters in Mexico, saying “a person who thinks only about building walls … and not of building bridges is not Christian.”
Trump should be happy he got a reprimand and did not, as he might have ages ago, get excommunicated. As much as some might derive pleasure with a Game of Thrones-y driving of Trump out of the political discourse, we’re kind of past that as a human race.
It’s for good reason. Back when the pope had more political clout, he could do things like get Joan of Arc burned at the stake for cross-dressing. Or plot the death of Pedro the Cruel, for things probably related to the dude earning the nickname “Pedro the Cruel.”
But probably the most heavy-metal excommunication was that of Formosus, who, fortunately for him, had already been dead for several months.
The year was 897. Pope Stephen VI exhumed Formosus (who, by the way, had been the previous pope) and put him on trial for violating Catholic law. Unsurprisingly, Formosus was found guilty. He was excommunicated and a Damnatio memoriae — a pre-Christian Roman practice of erasing a person from history books — was applied to the poor fellow.
The Damnatio memoriae didn’t really work because people remember when you do something like exhume the pope, excommunicate his corpse, and toss the body into the Tiber River. In the 19th century, a Frenchman painted Formosus’ trial as a depiction of the Catholic church’s overreach.
Trump is probably safe from eternal damnation and/or being the subject of a painting a millennium from now. He called the pope’s statement “disgraceful,” but he should be wary. Pope Francis is playing nice because he wants to, not because he has to.
