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I have written about moral leadership before, but I truly believe we are at a watershed moment today because of it. The verbal fight between Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV this past week is particularly significant because it suggests Trump will henceforth have to contend with an articulate and persistent moral voice. It also reminds us how important moral leadership is to any community, but particularly to America in 2026. We have valued our country’s moral leaders since America’s founding—individuals who have been willing to sacrifice everything for a moral purpose. Think Thomas Paine of “give me liberty or give me death,” George Washington walking away from the presidency after two terms, Abraham Lincoln putting himself at risk to hold the country together, office holders in every generation whose “profiles in courage” witnessed to the importance of particular American values, Martin Luther King, Jr. reluctantly taking up leadership of the civil rights movement, and so many women who have sacrificed their privacy and dignity to call out sexual predators. Moral leaders do not always “win,” of course. Lincoln and MLK Jr. were assassinated. So many politicians who took moral stands have been defeated in subsequent elections. Whistleblowers of all kinds have been ostracized and retaliated against. But no society can endure and thrive without moral leaders. They have integrity; they tell the truth. They weigh ethical values and make tough decisions, taking responsibility for their actions. They demonstrate great courage to remain faithful to critical moral values. They do their work with respect for others, including those who oppose them. They call out policies and actions; they do not condemn individuals. Moral leaders make communities, organizations, and social experiments like the U.S. last. No community, organization, or country can long endure if it does not have leaders who uplift all the people and motivate them to invest in the welfare of everyone else in that community. Sadly, we have a president now who simply has no moral center, no moral values that drive his policies or his own life. He sees only power, personal enrichment, and self-exultation. His flailing this weekend showed that he does not even understand the concept of moral leadership. His social media post portraying himself as Jesus showed us only his own moral poverty (see here). And so far Trump has been able to defeat any individual who shows a moral center: Liz Cheney, who decided she could not countenance Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, a growing crowd of lawyers who objected to the use of the Justice Department for Trump’s private revenge and were then fired, and untold officials and private individuals who objected to the cruelty of our foreign aid cuts and our immigration tactics. The selfless efforts of Minneapolis residents have recently given us some hope, as have a growing cadre of government officials who have resigned “noisily” to protest administration actions. But perhaps Trump has now found his match—or his greatest nightmare—a moral leader not subject to his threats. Pope Leo XIV, an American by birth but a citizen of the world by his service, cannot be threatened by tariffs or primary challengers. As Leo said after Trump’s blasts and belittling comments about him last weekend, “I have no fear of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly on the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the Church is here to do” (see here and here). Fortunately, Leo is by nature a careful and modest individual, who spent much of his career riding a horse to serve his rural parishioners, and who can articulate moral truths—that war is a last resort, not a first, and that Trump’s immigration policy is simply cruel—with calm and persistence. His voice is amplified domestically by an effective trio of U.S. Cardinals who share his care and manner: Cardinals Tobin in Newark, Cupich in Chicago, and McElroy in D.C. To be fair, of course, there have been many popes across history who were not moral exemplars and leaders, and certainly the Church has lost much moral authority due to the sexual abuse by priests, but at this moment, Leo is a particularly effective moral voice and a symbol of service and sacrifice—when we badly need one. Having set up the contrast between Leo’s moral voice and Trump’s absence of any values, the contrast will be played out again and again in the coming months. I, for one, hope that the Pope speaks selectively and modestly, limiting as much as possible so that he will not be pigeonholed as political. But this weekend’s extraordinary attacks have amply demonstrated that moral leadership is still essential for human and American progress. And I am hopeful that Leo’s example will motivate more congressional, state, and local leaders to consider being moral leaders as well. And I hope that knowing Leo is looking over his shoulder, Trump and his administration will moderate some of their most corrupt, self-serving, and cruel policies.
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