From the Maltese perspective which tends to reduce everything to a football game, it was Pope vs Trump.

This still being a Catholic country, there were far more Maltese who sided with Pope Leo than with Trump.

And Trump himself with his frenzied saying something, texting that, at all hours of the day, had driven most people up the wall.

The more outrageous the statements that kept coming from him, the more people in Malta lost any respect they may have had for the 'Leader of the Free World '.

Trump himself was not helped by those around him, not Vice President JD Vance, a recent convert to Catholicism, not Secretary for War Pete Hegseth, not even Trump's spokesperson Katherine Leavitt, recently removed by Trump himself to limit the damage, and not by the last representative of America's royal family, the son of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, America's first Catholic president.

But mainly it was Trump himself the cause of most of the anger in this his second term, his spite and vindictiveness against whoever disagreed with him, the marauding ICE let free in many US states against opponents even before they were found guilty by the Courts, the apparently unlimited seam of damaging revelations in the Epstein database, and lastly his unstinted support of Netanyahu's Israel in the ever-widening war in the Middle East.

Then, to top it all came this verbal spat with the first American Pope. Pope Leo had been remarkably low-key about the war and peace aspect so far but there is a limit to everything.

No sooner had Leo begun to pray for peace and deplore leaders with blood on their hands that Trump opened fire with all the guns at his disposal, including, tragically ridiculing the Pope.

But some important matters went unnoticed. The war against Iran, for instance, is not in a moral vacuum. It was caused by 40 years of an Iranian theocratic regime that kept an entire people, especially its women, in slavery. It was caused by the senseless butchery of some 40,000 mostly young people at the beginning of this year just because they protested against the regime.

Even before that there had been the massive Israeli response to the October 7 incursion from Gaza which in turn caused innumerable victims especially of children.

What went missing in Trump's defence was the absence of a thorough appreciation of the Christian teaching about a just war, a teaching especially studied and taught by St Augustine, the founder of Pope Leo's religious order.

This teaching is especially central in the Catholic tradition and it is, I hold, very important for us Maltese to understand the value of all our past when Malta was the bulwark of Christianity facing the Muslim southern shore of the Mediterranean. That Christianity was not of the pacifist strain but rooted in the just war tradition.

When Malta came under the British this aspect of our national identity was watered down and almost lost. But when Malta found itself once again the Bastion of the West in WW2 the just war teaching justified the suffering the Maltese had to endure.

In our times Malta's strategic importance has greatly decreased but our world still has moral issues and conflicts where one side has to defend the values that the other side threatens to undermine and eradicate. 

From the last war onwards, America despite all its mistakes has tried to fulfil this role, against Nazism, Bolshevism and Communism. 

Israel, on the other hand, aimed at providing the people of Israel a homeland where they can find, at last, a homeland where they can be safe from threats of pogroms etc.

Despite all the advisers he is surrounded with, Trump completely missed this point of the just war theory in defence of the US attacks on Iran, Gaza, etc. 

Justice demands that those who have committed massacres face justice. Of course, this argument can be turned around but that's no reason not to use the just war doctrine.

I can understand why the Pope, though he must know the just war theory inside out, was reluctant to use it. So he just expressed sorrow and condemnation which was shared by huge millions around the world. He visited, again in socks, a mosque. He praised Lebanon for peaceful coexistence between different faiths (when not so long ago Lebanon was a Christian country).

The just war tradition presupposes a guilty, wrong, side which must be combatted at least in ideas without compromise.

Trump had reason on his side but his side's antics made people forget that. He chose the way of force, not of reason.

Meanwhile the Pope continued his trip through Africa where it was clear the people appreciated and loved every minute of his visit, despite their poverty and despite the grasping abuses by the local dictators who tried their utmost to appear next to the Pope in his public appearances. And the money spent in the welcome.

Then both sides drew back from the cliff-edge. The Pope stopped giving impromptu open-ended press conferences on the plane which could be interpreted whichever way the press corps decided. And Trump moderated his ebullient verve which at times threatened to alienate many Catholic supporters in his MAGA base with mid-term coming up.

World affairs cannot be managed by impromptu blazes of online rhetoric blasted across the oceans. The world goes on alternating more mayhem and more new poverty stalking the rest of the world.

Where does this leave us? Secure within the EU carapace that so many envy us we have grown tepid in our appreciation of world affairs, probably caused by inroads of the "Mitna ghall-barrani" pacifist ideology and the influx of so many foreigners that the Maltese content of our Christian beliefs, and also our singular language, have been reduced to just fireworks and guest numbers.

But we must not forget we are the children of the just war doctrine and if we lose sight of that we risk losing our national identity.

And before I sign off the Royal Opera House must be rebuilt exactly the way it was.

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