Originally published at The Crux
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An interview with a senior Italian prelate appeared late in the week, and it contained several observations regarding political figures including U.S. President Donald Trump, which both readers and U.S. politicians would do well to note.
95-year-old Cardinal Camillo Ruini – who was highly regarded by Pope St. John Paul II – granted the wide-ranging interview to Italy’s Corriere della sera newspaper.
Particularly significant – and potentially telling – were the reasons the long-serving cardinal gave for the negative personal and political opinion Ruini expressed for Trump. They were especially interesting because of the way they contrast with his appreciation of the late Italian center-right leader and Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who many have seen as a forerunner of Trumpism.
He also looks at current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – Berlusconi’s political successor – and his observations on her count may give some insight into the post-Trump era.
“I met him when he ‘took the field’ to use his term,” Ruini said of Berlusconi, a reference to the way Berlusconi – the president of the AC Milan soccer club for more than three decades who died in 2023 – described his 1993 decision to found a center-right political party
