There is no phrase in the U.S. Constitution that explicitly uses the phrase “separation of church and state.” However, the First Amendment, which is also known as the Establishment Clause, states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
I noticed that on Saturday, April 29 while driving my car the U.S. flag was flying at half-mast at both a Roanoke nursing home and a U.S. post office. I was somewhat bewildered why the flags were at half-mast since I could not think of a famous American, who had recently died. Nor could I think of any horrible national public tragedy that occurred in the U.S. during the past week.
I was truly mystified.
I later noticed at 3:00 p.m. while watching the NFL draft on ESPN that the U.S. flag was flying at half-mast at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Then I became really curious.
So, I googled the following question on my iPhone, “why are U.S. flags flying at half-mast on Saturday, April 27?” My first search result stated that President Trump proclaimed on Monday, April 21 that all U.S. flags would be at half-mast until sundown on Saturday, April 26 because of the death of Pope Francis in Rome.
The first sentence of his proclamation, which was one hundred words long, consdensely stated, “As a mark of respect for the memory of His Holiness Pope Francis, … I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, on the day of interment.”
I can vividly remember when the U.S. flag was flown at half-mast on the day the Protestant Reverend Billy Graham was buried on March 2, 2018. However, the flag was not at half-mast for the ten days after he died on February 21, 2018.
I can also remember that the U.S. flag was flown at half-mast at the White House as proclaimed by President Biden for ten days after the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8, 2022. That was understandable because the United Kingdom is our closest military ally in the world. However, that is indeed rare for a foreign dignitary.
I think that President Trump made a great mistake in flying the U.S. flag at half-mast after the death of Pope Francis. That is because there is no established religion in the U.S. like Great Britain (Anglican), Denmark (Lutheran), Greece (Orthodox) and Malta (Roman Catholic). Unlike these four countries, the U.S. has many religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, plus a multitude of denominations and beliefs in regard to differing theology, liturgy, and leadership.
I can understand lowering the U.S. flag to half-mast if a famous American religious figure or cleric were to die. However, I think that lowering it to half-mast for a foreign religious person is inappropriate with a few exceptions. That would notably include Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 although she was the titular head or Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
I personally think that President Trump was trying to ingratiate himself too much with domestic Roman Catholic voters in both red and purple states, who currently make up “25% to 27% of the national electorate.” That is because Trump regardless of his personal feelingsis always thinkingahead even if it is years from now.
In my opinion, Pope Francis was an anti-American and anti-Israeli socialist, who hypocritically criticized President Trump during his first administration when he was initially building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Francis strongly criticized him for not allowing illegal immigrants, who were mostly Roman Catholic, to cross our southern border with impunity. The pope had no respect for the rule of law in regard to sovereign border security, unlike his tremendous respect for Roman Catholic canon law.
Pope Francis failed to realize that the U.S. is not the European Union where members can cross each other borders with ease and legality. Unfortunately, the pope was a proponent of illegal immigration as illustrated by his first papal trip to the Italian island of Lampedusa in July 2013, which is located halfway between Malta and Tunisia and has been a hotbed for Africans wanting to illegally enter the European Union to the great annoyance of the Italian taxpayers.
When was the last time the Vatican, which is surrounded by extremely high and thick stone medieval walls and guarded by Swiss guards or soldiers, who all have 9 mm Glock pistols hidden underneath their colorful Renaissance uniforms, ever allowed illegal immigrants to enter the Vatican? The answer is next to never.
A second reason I disliked Pope Francis was because when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1998 to 2013 he “freely admitted [that] he had never handled cases of accused priests [concerning child sexual abuse].” His comment wreaked of a massive cover-up considering that almost every Roman Catholic archdiocese throughout the world has had a chronic and insidious problem with clerical sexual abuse of children since the 1950s.
Pope Francis as the archbishop of Buenos Aires according to the New York Timesalso refused to “meet with abuse victims and their families, who say they begged to talk with him, according to news reports and several victims interviewed in Argentina [in 2014].”
In the U.S. alone the Roman Catholic Church has “spent more than $5 billion on allegations of sexual abuse of minors,” according to a new report released … [on January 15, 2025] … by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
A third and final reason is that I disliked Pope Francis was neither he nor any of his predecessors, especially Pope Pius XII (1939-58), ever publicly apologized to the Serbian Orthodox Church for the Roman Catholic clergy in both the Vatican and Nazi Croatia, who were directly involved in the documented diabolical complicity in directly supporting the Croatian Nazi Party (Ustase) from 1941 to 1941 because they thought that Soviet Communism was worse than German Nazi fascism when they were equally as evil. This resulted in the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma adults and children within Nazi Croatia and elsewhere in the Balkans being murdered in such death camps as Jasenovac and many others along with numerous other atrocities and massacres such as Glina in modern-day Croatia.
I have said enough, but it is a shame that the Roman Catholic Church has been hijacked by such poor leadership at times since the 1940s. This especially includes the Vatican, a plethora of archbishops and bishops throughout the world in regard to tolerating and covering up rampant child sexual abuse throughout the worldalong with never formally apologizing for its role in supporting and collaborating with the Croatian Nazis during World War II.
Fortunately, most Roman Catholic lay parishioners in the U.S. are, thankfully, still good people.
Robert L. Maronic