Is it enough to pray for God to hear and answer? No! There are even prayers that must be denounced as idolatrous because they use God to justify profit and monopolization which crush and kill.
A few days ago, Karoline Leavitt, spokesperson for President Trump, began her press conference on the war in Iran by asking journalists if they had heard the “Amen” which concluded her team’s enthusiastic prayer. Earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a public prayer at the Pentagon, asked God to enable them to exercise “extreme violence against those who deserve no mercy.”
Pope Leo, also American and therefore all the more concerned, responded in the strongest way in his Palm Sunday homily, quoting the prophet Isaiah: “Brothers and sisters, here is our God: Jesus, King of peace. A God who refuses war, which no one can invoke to justify war, who does not listen to the prayer of those who wage war and rejects it saying: ›Even if you multiply your prayers, I do not listen: your hands are full of blood’” (Is 1, 15).
“The idolatry of American leaders is seen like the nose in the middle of the face”
A few days earlier, in Monaco, the Pope had already fired a few arrows in the direction of “powerful authorities, ready to kill without scruples”. He encourages them to let themselves be converted and to come out of their idolatry. The etymology of the word idol in Greek: eidôlon) refers to the idea of shadow that we take for the thing itself. Thus, paradoxically, we can pray to God in an idolatrous manner. We are addressing an idea, a projection. Our “reduced vision,” says Léon, “diminishes the glory of the Almighty by transforming him into an object.”
The idolatry of American leaders is seen like the nose in the middle of the face. God becomes America identified with its white inhabitants. The slogan MAGA (make America great again) replaces the To the Greater Glory of God (for the greater glory of God).
But be careful not to reassure ourselves cheaply and, having spotted the obvious defect in the other, believe ourselves exempt from it. We all have idols that we maintain or easily settle for because they are comfortable and do not challenge us. Money, social position, nation or “Judeo-Christian culture” can so easily become idols, but also the moral law when we believe that it is only respect for it that saves us, or liturgical aesthetics, or social activism.
Everything that prevents us from seeking God first and his Christ, from putting our faith-trust in Him and from recognizing Him in each person who crosses our path, friend or enemy.
“But, again, be careful not to idolize the pope”
In the Bible those who are sent by God to denounce idolatry and the social injustice which is always linked to it are the prophets. They intervene in critical periods, perhaps similar to those we are experiencing. It is in fact in times of instability that the risk is great of throwing ourselves into the arms of falsely reassuring idols who guarantee us happiness. It is then also in these times that we must listen to prophets like Pope Leo who call us to turn towards the authentic face of God which “manifests the true name of his omnipotence: mercy”. But, again, be careful not to idolize the pope. It is only one voice among the baptized who all have this vocation and this responsibility to speak and act prophetically in the place they occupy in the body of Christ.
Thierry Collaud
1is avril 2026
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