Europe’s bishops hope US-born Pope can break through Trump’s anti-EU bias

Elise Ann Allen/ Crux• May 24, 2025

Several leading European bishops that represent Catholic interests in the European Union have stated that a significant concern for them that is shared by the Vatican is the exclusion by the United States of the EU from key international negotiations, such as peace talks regarding the war in Ukraine.

The comments from the bishops followed a meeting with Pope Leo XIV on Friday, 23 May. Bishop Mariano Crociata, president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), when asked whether he believed a US-born pope would be more effective in engaging in dialogue with US President Donald Trump and his administration, told Crux: “We simply expect it.”

“We did not speak about it, but to me personally it seems like something that will come naturally, and I think there are already the right hints. The signs are already there, they have already been there,” he said.

Crociata, who is bishop of the Italian diocese of Latina-Terracina-Sezze-Priverno, was present alongside COMECE’s permanent leadership council for the meeting with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Friday.

The meeting had already been scheduled as part of Pope Francis’s agenda; however, after his death, the new Pope opted to keep the appointment, using the occasion primarily to listen to the European bishops’ concerns.

Spanish Father Manuel Barrios Prieto, General Secretary of COMECE, told journalists after the May 23 meeting that, “the Pope wanted to listen today. He didn’t have a lot of responses but wanted to listen” as they each shared their perspectives and concerns.

A variety of issues were discussed, such as war, migration, artificial intelligence and matters related to politics, including the rise of rightwing nationalist populism, US tariffs, and the weakening of the European Union on the global stage.

It is no secret that there has been an anti-European tone coming from the new United States administration, with several prominent politicians and top presidential aides making dismissive and derogatory comments about Europe.

Notoriously, in a Signal group chat created to organise military strikes in Yemen, which a journalist was added to by accident in an incident now known as “Signalgate”, US Vice-President JD Vance at one point in the exchange said, “I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

A few lines later, in an apparent allusion to Europe’s economic benefit drawn from reliance on the US’s naval capacities, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said, “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

Crociata told Crux that the issue of anti-European sentiment within the Trump administration did not come up specifically, but rather, they addressed the fact that Europe has been “cut off or in any case put a bit aside in relations and confrontations such as that of the war in Ukraine, in which the European Union is implicated and directly at stake”.

“This is a difficulty for the European Union, which evidently needs to recover its own legitimate protagonism,” he said, saying the bishops of Europe want to help the continent regain its voice.

Specifically, he said, they want Europe to “express its own initiatives, its own global possibilities in a way that is adequate to its economic, technical and political stature”.

Crociata also responded to questions from journalist on peace negotiations in Ukraine and whether a potential Vatican mediation was discussed.

Vatican mediation was not specifically discussed, he said, saying the conversation focused instead on “the desire to achieve a just and lasting peace as soon as possible”.

He said the issue of rearmament of Ukraine was discussed, with the emphasis being on the fact that any fresh investment in weapons would impact “the weakest sectors of society.”

“The concern is that rearmament will lead to a reduction in investment and social commitment,” especially for the poor, children, and elderly, he said.

In addition to Crociata, other participants in Friday’s meeting were Archbishop Antoine Hérouard Dijon, France, COMECE vice president; Bishop Rimantas Norvila of Vilkaviškis, Lithuania, vice president; Bishop Nuno Brás da Silva Martins of Funchal, Portugal, vice president; Bishop Czeslaw Kozon of Copenhagen, Denmark; and Archbishop Bernardo Auza, Vatican envoy to the European Union.

The European Union’s roots as a “project of peace” was discussed, esecially in the context of the current war in Ukraine, as was the fact that many European countries in public opinion are promoting “a populist movement, a counter-movement” to EU cohesion.

Norvila said he voiced the concerns of Eastern European countries most directly impacted by the war in Ukraine, and Russia’s potential military expansion in the region, saying the influence of the EU in being able to stop the war “is unknown”, but they “hope for peace”.

Europe’s so-called “demographic winter” caused by an increasingly low-birth rate was also mentioned, with Brás da Silva Martins stating that “Europe needs migrants” to make up for the lack children amid an aging workforce.

Migration is also a question “of European roots that must be respected. So, the human person should be welcomed even if they are not a European citizen,” he said.

Also touched on was the need to accompany young people, and efforts by some countries, particularly in Scandinavia, facing threats to religious freedom such as efforts to cancel baptismal records, which Kozon said is of particular concern in the Netherlands and is a “violation of the freedom of religion” born out of a fear of Islam.

“It also touches Christian churches,” he said, noting that parents now fear the push to cancel baptismal records by some will eventually mean they lose their right to freely educate their children in the Catholic Faith.

Crociata in his remarks said there were many topics that were not addressed, such as gender, but they still covered a lot of ground with the new Pope, and found him keen to listen, and to act.

“We found a person who wanted to begin with a great commitment and dedication, which he wants to live with his entire person,” he said, adding that Pope Leo wants to be in close contact and “to listen and to gather everything that is useful for his service”.

Photo: Pope Leo XIV blesses the crowd at the end of his first weekly general audience at St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, 21 May 2025. (Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty Images.)