Why Donald Trump is now heaping praise on Pope Francis

IT IS probably unprecedented in American electoral history for the world’s most influential religious leader and the world’s most powerful political leader both to criticise a presidential candidate in the same week. On February 17th President Barack Obama said at a press conference in California that he continues to believe that Donald Trump would not become president, because it’s “a serious job”, not a bit like hosting a talk or reality show. And on February 18th, Pope Francis, on his way back from a six-day visit to Mexico, said in reply to a question about how voters should react to Mr Trump’s plans to expel undocumented immigrants and to fortify America’s southern border with a wall, that “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian”.

Have the pope and Mr Obama, who have maintained a cordial relationship since the pontiff helped to bring about talks between the American and Cuban government, hurt Mr Trump’s presidential ambition with their remarks? Or have they inadvertently done him a favour? Mr Trump thrives on confrontation. Shortly after Mr Obama’s comments, the billionaire said that he took being criticised by the president as a «great compliment”. His reaction to the pope’s criticism was angrier. Speaking at a campaign rally in South Carolina, Mr Trump said that “for a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful”. Mr Trump went further. In a statement on his website, on February 18th, he proclaimed grandiosely that “if and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened”.

Criticism from two of the most admired figures in world affairs has given Mr Trump yet more of the publicity he so relishes. His supporters have been galvanised by the remarks of Mr Obama, who is despised by many of them. But the pope’s words are a different matter. Around 22% of America’s electorate are Catholic—and Mr Trump has been quite popular with Catholics, especially conservative ones, even though many Catholics don’t consider him particularly religious. According to a survey, conducted in January by the Pew Research Center, 49% of Catholics who are Republicans or lean toward the party, said that Mr Trump was not very or not at all religious. (Only 35% of white mainstream Protestants judged him to be not very or not at all religious.) It would help Mr Trump’s political ambitions to be considered a more religious person (and not someone who disparages world religious leaders). Almost three-quarters of Republican registered voters, who view Mr Trump as very or somewhat religious, say they think he would make a “good or a great” president, according to Pew. Just 41% of Republicans who say Mr Trump is not religious at all think he would be a good or a great president.

The Catholic electorate consists of an increasingly large proportion of Latinos, who are appalled by Mr Trump’s talk of a wall as well as his outlandish proposal to deport America’s more than 11m undocumented immigrants. They also adore their Argentine pope. While the ratio of white to Hispanic Catholics was roughly ten to one in the early 1990s, the ratio today is less than two to one, according to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). And a sizeable 43% of all Republican Catholics agree with the pope’s views on immigration, which are the polar opposite of Mr Trump’s, according to the PRRI. Mr Trump must avoid giving them more reasons to dislike him because on other topics, Republican Catholics, the pope and Mr Trump are quite closely aligned. Sixty-four percent of Republican Catholics back the pope’s opposition to gay marriage (Mr Trump says he wants to overturn the Supreme Court decision legalising gay marriage) and 54% support his anti-abortion stance (Mr Trump tends to deflect questions about abortion).

By the evening of February 18th, Mr Trump was in damage-repair mode, which is very unusual for a man who tends to double down rather than retreat. «I don’t like fighting with the pope,” Mr Trump said at a GOP town hall, hosted by CNN, in South Carolina. «I like his personality; I like what he represents.” The pope was a “wonderful guy”, said Mr Trump and their altercation was the fault of the press. He also offered to meet the pope “anytime he wants”.

Meanwhile the pope’s handlers tried to play down Pope Francis’s unscripted remarks. They have been there before. This pope is known for speaking out. He gave his entourage more than one headache on the way back from Mexico when he compared abortion with the crimes of the mafia and seemed to suggest that contraception could be used to slow the spread of the Zika virus. On February 19th a spokesman for the Vatican said that the pope’s comments about Mr Trump were not intended in any way as a personal attack nor an indication of how to vote. It is true that Pope Francis never uttered Mr Trump’s name. But he replied to a direct question from a reporter about him.