Pope Leo XIV, Bill Gates are good antidotes to Trump’s ‘me first’ culture

Andres Oppenheimer

The election of Pope Leo XIV, a supporter of social justice and the environment, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ powerful denunciation of fellow billionaire Elon Musk for policies Gates says are “killing the world’s poorest children” might seem to be unrelated news stories. But they are not.

Together, they spotlight an increasingly open split among world political and business leaders.

On one side, you have figures like the new pope and Gates, who are using their power to help the vulnerable and protect the planet. On the other, you have leaders like President Trump and Musk — the world’s richest person and a top aide to the U.S. president — who are betting that cutting social inclusion programs and rolling back environmental rules will reduce what they call government “waste” and make things better for everyone.

Granted, these different worldviews have existed forever. But they have never been so visible as today, since Trump started his second term publicly boasting about massive deportations of immigrants — including many who are legally in the country — and cutting funds for social and environmental programs.

So far, the likes of Trump and Musk are winning the battle. They are, after all, the most powerful men on earth.

Despite the big crowds at the Vatican cheering, waving flags and celebrating the election of Pope Leo, the first U.S.-Peruvian pontiff, the hard reality is that the Catholic Church has seen its flock shrink significantly in recent decades.

While there are about 1.5 billion Catholics in the world, polls show that the Church is losing followers in the United States, Europe and Latin America, and is only growing in Sub-Saharan Africa and in some Asian countries.

The percentage of Americans who describe themselves as Christians has fallen to 68%, down from 91% in 1948, according to a Gallup poll.

In Latin America, the percentage of people who trust the Church has fallen from 77% in 2001 to 61% today, an annual Latinobarómetro poll shows.

Most experts say the Church’s scandals involving pedophile priests and a general trend toward secularization in developed countries have hurt the Catholic Church.

Daniel Alvarez, a professor of comparative religions at Florida International University, told me that the Church is growing in Africa because Catholicism there is taught “in clear, unambiguous terms.”

Pope Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago but spent much of his adult life in Peru, where he became a naturalized citizen, is likely to follow the steps of late Pope Francis in trying to modernize the Church. That may play well in the industrialized world, but may not help the Church grow in absolute numbers of followers globally, Alvarez says.

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski told me that, while the Church has lost followers in recent decades, the trend may reverse itself. He cited the example of France, where the Church was decimated after the French revolution, but revived and thrived after the rise of the 19th century’s St. John Vianney, better known as the Curé d’Ars (the parish priest of Ars.)

And, let’s face it, the voices for altruism and defense of the environment in politics as in the business world have lost ground in America, in part because of Trump’s successful campaign to deride them as “woke.”

Most billionaires aren’t as generous as Gates. On May 8, Gates announced that he will give away $200 billion — or virtually all his fortune — by 2045. He said the money will be used for eradicating diseases like polio and malaria, ending preventable deaths among women and children, and reducing global poverty.

Gates told The Financial Times that Musk, a major financial backer of Trump’s 2024 campaign and head of the White House DOGE government cost-cutting office, has created havoc in Africa with his cuts to U.S. foreign aid to poor countries.

“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates said. “I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money.”

I have no illusions that Pope Leo and Gates will win this battle anytime soon. But it is refreshing to see that Trump and Musk’s “me first” view of the world may be challenged by an American pope, in Trump’s own language, and business leaders like Gates.

While Trump and Musk are right in that there are some examples of government waste that should be corrected, they have been enjoying a free ride publicly deriding altruism, foreign aid and concern for the environment.

Let’s hope that Leo XIV and more business moguls like Gates begin to raise their voices and put some sense into the prevailing culture of economic narcissism. Their voices are needed more than ever in recent memory.