Bad for the Church, and the World

Historians are wary of making comparisons between different eras and events, but also professionally disposed to doing so—Church historians included. Hence this consideration of the role and response of the Catholic Church in the Trump era in the United States, and in the Fascist era of Italy from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s. There are differences, of course. Yet given the current moment—an authoritarian president attacking democracy at home and waging war abroad, a U.S.-born pope in the Vatican—it’s helpful to consider some of the similarities.