I can understand Pope Leo XIV having the Jones for some Mickey-Ds 🍔🍟. But remembering that Trump made this picture a while back, and considering that Trump is a demented fool. Keeping one's ass in Rome is the wiser choice. I agree.
What was the Avignon papacy?
Today, we view the papacy as a pastoral, not a princely role. Yet questions about boundaries between ecclesial and temporal power remain.
Pope Leo XIV has been speaking forcefully and persistently against the United States' military actions in Iran, addressing not just war in the abstract, but the specific actions of the Donald Trump administration. And now a report from The Free Press has revealed that in January, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, then the Vatican's ambassador to the United States, to the Pentagon. Behind closed doors, Colby threatened the ambassador, reminding him of the power of the U.S. army, and telling him that the church "had better take it's side." As part of his threat, he invoked the Avignon papacy.
Holy shit!