FGF Books, 5/2/2025 — A meme is making the rounds: a bull in a china shop has destroyed every plate, saucer, and cup. We are asked, “Is this what you voted for?” As a matter of fact, it is.

It is also what I voted for in 2016. The problem in 2016 was that politicized Democrat Deep Staters in the FBI, DOJ, military, CIA, federal judiciary, and Congress were in that china shop and illegally prevented the bull from doing his work. And they were cheered on by a thoroughly corrupted gutter press.

This time around, however, the bull has neutered and/or taken over all those agencies, including the media, and hired a lot of lesser bulls, but bulls who know precisely what to do. These bulls have a plan, and they are moving fast and breaking things, and, in the words of Pope Francis, making a mess.

And as we pray for the Holy Father in his final agony, we wonder who the next pope will be and pray he will be a Trumpian pope, a bull in the china shop who will “make a mess.”

What would this coming Trumpian pope do?

What would this coming Trumpian pope do? Fire a lot of people, for starters.

Fire a lot of people, for starters. And don’t do it with a scalpel. Deep Staters everywhere know how to blunt the scalpel. No, the Trumpian pope must use the chain saw. Fire 50 percent of the people who work in the Vatican. Fire every head of every dicastery in Rome. Close half of them down. Do that in the first few weeks after the conclave.

Recreate the Pontifical Council for the Family the way it was created. Recreate the Pontifical Academy for Life in the way it was intended.

The rise of Francis and “who am I to judge” gave courage to heterodox professors, especially on the gay thing at pontifical universities. They giddily identified themselves. We know who they are. Fire them all within days of the conclave.

This will get a lot of attention. Ignore the shrieks from the usual suspects around the world. Proceed with your work with all due dispatch.

There’s more, much more.

Synodality? It’s over. Thanks for your work.

Any bishops must be chosen from those ordained to the priesthood in the last 10-15 years.

Abrogate the motu proprio that gutted personal prelatures, restoring the harmony and existence of personal prelatures as they existed when Francis became pope. Make the prelate of Opus Dei a bishop again.

Immediately rehire the very talented holy men the pope fired, including and especially Cardinal Müller, Cardinal Burke, and Cardinal Sarah. Give Burke back his stipend and Roman apartment. Give them all their old jobs immediately.

Take the boot off the neck of the Knights of Malta and Communion and Liberation.

Immediately begin an investigation — inquisition? — into the homosexuals in the Vatican. Fire them. Laicize them.

Turn your attention to the wider Church.

Reestablish the Traditional Latin Mass everywhere. Immediately cancel Amoris Laetitia. Immediately cancel same-sex blessings.

Reestablish the Traditional Latin Mass everywhere. Everywhere. No priest needs permission. It is open to all priests and all dioceses.

Immediately cancel Amoris Laetitia. Immediately cancel same-sex blessings. Immediately take “inadmissible” out of the catechism on the question of the death penalty. What did that mean anyway? Excommunicate a number of politicians who support abortion.

Excommunicate politicians who support abortion.

While you are at it, cut the USCCB in half. Make it clear that the committees of the USCCB do not speak for the Church. The USCCB is not in the hierarchy. Let the bishops speak to us once or twice a year when they meet as a body.

Expand the number of dioceses in the United States. We need 400 of them or more. How can a bishop be a shepherd to 500,000+ souls? For instance, four hundred would still be far fewer bishops per Catholic than in Italy.

Close any office or program called “Justice and Peace.” Justice is good. Peace is good. But together, not so much.

Close any office or program called “Justice and Peace.”

Institute an annual collection for pro-life. Make it two.

Close some seminaries in the United States. Any whiff of the gay thing, or other heterodoxies, close them down. Send some of our seminarians to Africa. Bring 1,000 African priests to the United States.

Fire every bishop who ignored credible reports of priest sex abuse. We all know of at least one who would qualify.

Fire every bishop who ignored credible reports of priest sex abuse.

I am out of breath just writing this. I wake up every morning in Trump’s America, and it’s Christmas every day. He fired the head of the Kennedy Center. Whoa! Who even thought of that? He appointed Dan Bongino as number two at the FBI. I don’t even like Dan Bongino, but it’s fantastic.

What Trump understood was that there was a permanent bureaucracy lying in the deep weeds, waiting to stop any and all reforms. The only way to beat them is to move fast, flood the zone, make everything so fast and furious that they cannot catch their breath, cannot really mount a response. Make a mess.

Who would be able to do such things? Who would be a Trumpian pope? I am not a prognosticator. Others are. We have a small pool of cardinals who would be considered. Maybe the conclave needs to go beyond the College of Cardinals. I don’t know, but whoever thought Trump would be president? Hardly anyone. Pick a bishop hardly anyone knows. Pick Msgr. Shea from University of Mary in North Dakota. Don’t know him? Look him up.

I remember when the last conclave met. I was at a Holy See meeting at the U.N. when the white smoke rose. As we sat around a conference table, our phones started to buzz. I caught the eye of the Nuncio. We exchanged meaningful glances. Later, in the U.N. cafeteria, all the lefties were in a tizzy about who this Bergoglio might be. Early reports were that he was solid on gay and marriage.

None of us were prepared for what happened. We spent years explaining the pope. “Well, he may have said something like that, but what he meant was….” Some of us gave up after a few years. I tried to adopt the role of a 13th-century peasant: There is a pope somewhere far off. I love and pray for him, but I don’t know what he does or says. I have my priest and my bishop.

Many of us are still confused about certain things that happened under the reign of Francis. Do we really have to give religious assent to the scientific claim of “climate change?” How is it possible that something that was a sin on Monday —taking Communion in a sinful relationship — becomes perfectly fine on Tuesday? How is it possible that something perfectly fine on Monday — the death penalty —becomes a sin on Tuesday? None of this really affects me, but it is confusing.

Pray for two things: That our beloved Pope Francis experiences a holy and happy death and is welcomed into the Beatific Vision. And pray for the coming of a Trumpian pope.

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Copyright @ 2025 by Austin Ruse and Crisis Magazine, where this article was published on February 28, 2025. All rights reserved.

Austin Ruse is an author, a contributing editor of Crisis Magazine, and the founder of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), established to monitor and affect social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions.

He is also a Knight in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta; a founding member of the Diplomatic Society of St. Gabriel; and a supernumerary member of Opus Dei.

More than 1,000 columns and essays of his have been published. He has written four books: Under Siege: No Finer Time to be a Faithful Catholic (Sophia Institute Press, 2021); The Catholic Case for Trump (Regnery Publishing, 2020); Fake Science: Exposing the Left’s Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data (Regnery Publishing 2017); and Littlest Suffering Souls: Children Whose Short Lives Point Us to Christ (Tan Books, 2017).

The Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation is a nonprofit, 501©(3) organization which owns the copyrights to all the essays, articles and books of Samuel Francis and Joseph Sobran. The foundation, which relies exclusively on donors to carry out its work, is in the long process of publishing anthologies of their work.

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