Merkel Sought the Pope to Cope With Trump
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s memoir, Freedom, will be released on November 26. The next week, she will present her book with former President Barack Obama in the United States. The two share a common nemesis, which she is very critical of in her book: Donald Trump.
Germany’s Die Zeit received exclusive excerpts from the book, which revealed some surprising details.
In regards to Trump, she writes:
For him, all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other; he did not believe that the prosperity of all could be increased through cooperation.
She also accuses Trump of lacking rational reasoning. Regarding her meeting with President Trump in the White House in March 2017, she writes:
We spoke on two different levels. Trump on an emotional level, me on a factual one. When he did pay attention to my arguments, it was usually only in order to construct new accusations from them. When I flew home, I didn’t have a good feeling. I concluded from my conversations: There would be no joint work for a networked world with Trump.
When the U.S. president threatened to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement due to its destructiveness on the U.S. economy, Merkel sought the council of a spiritual leader:
On 17 June 2017, I met Pope Francis at a private audience. As I knew from my three previous meetings with him that he was interested in global cooperation, especially for the benefit of the poor, I wanted to talk to him about my agenda for the upcoming G-20 meeting in Hamburg. … He asked me to tell him what I had planned for our G-20 presidency. I told him about our logo, the knot of the cross, and told him about our preparatory work, which included a large number of meetings with civil society. … He listened to me attentively.
Then I came to my real point of concern, the announced withdrawal of the U.S.A. from the Paris Climate Agreement. Without naming names, I asked him how he would deal with fundamentally differing opinions in a group of important personalities. He understood me immediately and answered me straightforwardly: “Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break.” I liked this image. I repeated it to him. “Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break.” In this spirit, I would try to solve my problem with the Paris Agreement and Trump in Hamburg, although I didn’t yet know exactly what that meant in concrete terms.
Merkel was a seasoned world leader at the time. The New York Times even called her “the liberal West’s last defender.” Yet she considered Trump such a formidable challenge that she sought the counsel of the pope—this despite the fact that she is Protestant and not overly religious.
After leaving office, her disdain from Mr. Trump has continued. She notes:
At the time I am writing these lines, the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November 2024 is still open. I sincerely hope that Kamala Harris, whom I met at a breakfast together during my last visit to Washington as federal chancellor in July 2021, will prevail over her rival in the presidential election and be elected the first female president of the United States of America.
Despite the hopes, dreams and fears of European leaders, Donald Trump is returning to the White House. Europe’s open hostility will make honest cooperation with the U.S. difficult. On top of that, Europe today is in a most precarious economic situation. The problem is compounded by Russia’s war on Ukraine and plummeting trade relations with the East.
While everyone recognizes that this hour requires strong European unity and leadership, no one appears able to achieve it.
Indeed, as the late Herbert W. Armstrong concluded on Jan. 23, 1980, the challenge of creating a “United States of Europe” is so great that “[t]he politicians cannot do this by themselves. Only with the collaboration of the pope can they do it.”
Many today admire the power of the Catholic Church, and some even consult with the pope to guide their politics. But will they allow the pope to help them complete Europe’s unification process?
History and Bible prophecy indicate that they will.
Our book The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy shows that the Catholic Church was the power behind the major events of Europe’s history in the last 1,500 years, including World War ii. These events were prophesied in the Bible, as this book shows, and the last resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire is set to come in the very near future.
Therefore, we should expect European leaders to increasingly look to the Vatican for guidance. Request a free copy of The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy to learn more.