The two people in the world who should feel most obliged to be thoughtful and restrained in their public statements are the president of the United States and the pope. But neither of the current incumbents seems willing or able to rise above his immediate political impulses as is necessary to protect the institution he leads. 

It says much about modern culture that President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV have been “trolling” each other, a slang term that describes the low practice of goading and baiting someone in public with whom one disagrees. Watching the exchange between the leader of the world’s most powerful nation and the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics in recent days, one is left agape with near disbelief.