A Vatican ‘Virus’?

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President Trump: "From this day forward it's going to be only 'America first.'"

The Vatican is criticizing nations focusing on their own citizens, calling them "misguided and counterproductive."

A new document released by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences titled "Responding to the Pandemic: Lessons for Future Actions and Changing Priorities" declares, "Unless governments reduce their nationalistic interests, there is reason to expect a worsening of the health crisis and consequently a deep global recession, with profound and tragic implications especially for poor countries."

While nations are closing borders and battling rising Wuhan virus infection rates, the Vatican says, "seeking protection through isolationism would be misguided and counterproductive."

It's not the Vatican's first condemnation of populism and nationalism.

Since the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, citizens of other nations like Hungary, Brazil and Poland have elected governments focusing more on their own countries — and Pope Francis doesn't like it.

In 2016 after Trump's election, he related populism to the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, saying, "Germany ... was looking for a leader, someone who would give her back her identity, and there was a little man named Adolf Hitler who said 'I can do it.'"

In 2018, he said: "We know how populism starts: by sowing hate. You can't live sowing hate."

The Vatican document goes on to suggest a massive reordering of society after the Wuhan virus is under control. But besides demanding a "more caring and fairer society," no mention at all is made of God or the primacy of the Catholic Church.

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