Why the silence of Ireland’s church leaders in these dark days of Donald Trump?

Dressed in purple canonicals with full all-white clerical collar and pectoral cross hanging from his neck, 70-year-old English Archbishop Jonathan Blake – who broke with the Church of England in 1994 following which he cofounded the Open Episcopal Church – spoke from the heart. His sermon: “Trump, Maga and the Church Lead America to Hell.”A sermon for the ages.Delivered not on the Mount but from a much derided (and with good reason) social media platform on September 16th, 2025, yet a sermon from the Mount still apt for these dark, dark days.READ MOREThe original Biblical Sermon on the Mount, otherwise known as the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), was in two parts. Part one: the conduct of Christians before God. Part two: our relationship to the world.For people of a particular age and for regular churchgoers, the Beatitudes have a familiar refrain: “Blessed are …, Blessed are …, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness …, Blessed are the peacemakers.”The second part … “You are the salt of the earth … You are the light of the world.”Archbishop Blake’s sermon was also in two parts. The first concerned Trump’s America: he referred to 47 crazed school attacks by September last year, 19 children’s lives horrifically ended. In 12 months, 45,000 lives brutally lost from civilians using arms, 770,000 homeless people with many cites banning them from sleeping in public and food distributors fined in some areas for giving them food.A total of 48 million battling substance use disorder, often injecting in public. Some 42 million living in poverty; 30 million with no health insurance; 51,000 undocumented migrants detained, half of them unaccompanied migrant children taken to emigration courts with no legal representation.Up to 32,000 new HIV infections a year and 2.2 million needing prep, as Trump axed HIV prevention programmes. [ Who are the Burke children trying to impress? Could it be their mother?Opens in new window ]This while having the wealthiest population in the world, including 25 million millionaires, more than 10,000 centimillionaires (own over €100 million) and 870 billionaires.All while boasting 219 million Christians. Churches are full. Jesus is worshipped. God is praised and the culture collapses, mired in pretence, corruption, culture wars, ruthlessness, depravity and a callous abuse of the poor. What seems to matter is money, power and fame alone.The second part of his sermon was directed at the British government.The United Kingdom, its king and prime minister shamefully rolled out the red carpet for a second time for this monstrous president with his Maga bullying policies leading the world towards hell. Archbishop Blake was not the first bishop to confront Donald Trump. In January 2025, at the Washington National Cathedral prayer service, Episcopalian Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde spoke directly to Trump at his second inauguration as president asking him to grant mercy to families fearing deportation and those fleeing war and persecution.Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde used her sermon to call on Donald Trump, who was attending, to protect LGBTQ and immigrant rights. Photograph: The Irish Times Stock Images She pointed out that “the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” adding they were “good neighbours” and “faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara and temples”.“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land,” she said.Bishop of Derry Michael Router, then auxiliary bishop in Armagh, described Budde’s sermon as “a wake-up call to all of us on the challenges inherent in trying to live out our Christian faith in today’s fractured world”.The Association of Leaders of Missionaries and Religious of Ireland (AMRI), which represents 150 Irish Catholic religious congregations from across the island, wrote to Budde thanking her for her “courage in publicly conveying the truth, grounded in the Gospel, that reminds us all of our duty of care”. But nothing from other Irish Church leaders.[ The ‘Irish pope’ who was equally disliked by Irish patriots, Protestants and BritainOpens in new window ]However, Pope Leo earlier this year said – without naming Trump – that the world was being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants” who spend billions on war. When the US president described the pope as “weak” Leo told reporters he did not fear Trump. “I do not see my role as that of a politician. I am not a politician and I do not want to enter a debate with him,” he said. “I continue to speak strongly against war, seeking to promote peace, dialogue and multilateralism among states to find solutions to problems.” Trump’s misanthropism is undisguised, as is his disdain for all humans other than a wealthy white elite and his narrow sycophantic clique, his contempt for the poor of the world, his crass disregard for the very Earth on which we all depend.What struck most about Trump’s recent visit to Ireland was the silence of the main Christian churches. Nothing from Dublin’s Catholic and Church of Ireland Archbishops Dermot Farrell and Michael Jackson. Nothing from Church of Ireland Bishop Michael Burrows and Catholic Bishop Fintan Monahan in whose Killaloe diocese Trump’s golf links is located. It wasn’t always so. The late Catholic Bishop of Killaloe Willie Walsh courageously and unequivocally supported peace activists at Shannon Airport. “Their peaceful protest challenges us that we cannot selfishly ignore this appalling threat to the lives of so many people,” he said. And in September 2025 the Association of Catholic Priests did describe as “shameful” a decision to host the Irish Open this year at Trump’s Doonbeg golf course.[ ‘That okey-doke will not work this time’: Obama takes up mic to duel with tired-sounding TrumpOpens in new window ]One other notable exception. At the recent protest in Doonbeg, a lone member of the clergy, Rev Steven Foster, a minister of the Methodist church, was present. Courage in these dark days. Courage too from Archbishop Blake’s open challenge to the British prime minister and the British monarch, supreme governor and titular head of the Church of England, for their obsequious treatment of Trump.If ever there was a moment when church leaders should demonstrate some courage it is now. Inexplicably, that courage has too often been absent.Archbishop Blake’s sermon ended in prayer: “May God raise up leaders of integrity who shun self, commercial, religious and national interests and whose aspirations are based on justice, fairness, equality and love for all the human family.”If only.Peadar King is a documentary film maker and a non-fiction writer. He is a member of World beyond War (Irish Section)