By Earl Bousquet

   The Caribbean’s cultural tradition has always been to mix-and-match Easter’s Holy Days and related Holidays, to pray and play accordingly -flying kites, eating Hot Crossed Buns, drinking strong grog and attending Mass.

    But Easter 2025 is also like no other, with Christians of all denominations and congregations of all beliefs facing one common underlying problem across Planet Earth today: the impending long-term Hell-and-Damnation effects of US sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump -and not only on Christendom, but the entire world.

   Tomorrow (Easter Sunday, April 20), will mark exactly three months since Trump’s Second Coming to the US Presidency -and everything he’s done and said since winning the November 5, 2024 Presidential Elections has had a veritable messianic ring to it.

   Indeed, The Donald behaves like he too sees his return to The White House as a Second Coming -also a-la Jesus Christ.

   By his rightwing evangelical supporters’ measure, just as The Bible says Christ Rose from the Dead (on Easter Sunday), President Trump’s second election victory is being shown in the same light -some even claiming his survival of two assassination attempts amounted to “a call by God” for his Second Coming.

   Since returning to the Oval Office, the 47th US President has said and done everything to try to assure Christians everywhere he’s really the 21st Century’s God Almighty, the world’s New Messiah.

   He operates more like an imperial emperor than an elected president, more like a King Donald II and way above-the-law -defying the Supreme Court and Federal judges, while pursuing vengeance against all he feels may have sinned against him politically.

   His promoters use selective quotes and deliberate mis-interpretations of The Bible to wash-away all the dozens of judicial Sins of Commission and Omission Candidate Trump was charged with, now that he’s president.

   Of course, no religious leader of global stature behaves like that. Take Pope Francis II, the Latin American head of the Roman Catholic Church, who’s the total opposite -and example of the humility and brotherly love Catholics and Christians everywhere appreciate.

   Not all religious leaders are perfect, as even popes are not infallible. But this first non-European pope in the history of the Catholic Church -a former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina- has consistently exuded the humility in power that world leaders on the political stage simply have not matched, or simply cannot.

   Last week, Pope Francis canceled the license of a Catholic order, Sodality of Christian Life (SCV) or Soldico, that fell into disrepute for tarnishing the church’s godly and goodly image.

   According to a related article by Salvatore Cernuzio in Vatican News, the church’s hierarchy had ruled that as of Monday (April 14), “the entity” (SCV) “no longer exists.”

   Pope Francis undoubtedly blessed the punishment of the sinful order, so, note the differences between how a genuine church-leader walks and talks and how politicians anointed God the Shepherd by fellow sheep talk and walk.

   Under Pope Francis, the Vatican is also currently witnessing the closing of chapters of misbehaving Catholic Orders the world over, including in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

   Opus Dei -another Catholic Order- has a presence in more than 70 countries, but is strongest in Spain, Italy and Latin America. A group of 43 women in the pontiff’s native Argentina have long accused Opus Dei of “coercing them as children and adolescents into a life of domestic servitude” and may soon get justice.

   The women say they were forced into “working up to 12-hour days, cooking and cleaning for the elite members, without pay” and faced “extreme control”, their “letters censored” and “banned from reading anything but children’s books, or religious texts.”

When they eventually escaped, the women say, they were “left without money, clothes or qualifications.”

   After a two-year investigation, Argentinian federal prosecutors are accusing senior leaders of Opus Dei in South America of “overseeing the exploitation and trafficking of girls, adolescents and women between 1972 and 2015.”

   The prosecutors’ report is now before a judge, who’ll decide whether to proceed to trial and the Pope is remaining quiet until the court rules.

   But try telling that to President Trump, who’s showing increasing disregard for the rule of law and global order, over-ruling judicial decisions and condemning entire nations to Hell on Earth through tariffs and hundreds of patented Executive Orders.

   So, President Trump is spending his Easter Weekend ‘thanking God’ for his Second Coming, while his Republican cardinals declare him ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Earth’s Rightful Ruler’.

   Easter 2025 features everything -from the unification of observance of Easter Sunday this year by Western and Orthodox Catholics, to deification of President Trump by his most ‘faithful’ supporters, to the launch of World War III -by trade.

   However, the Wannabe King is also learning -very quickly- that he’s already starting to lose any miraculous power he might have thought he had, in terms of American support for his policies.

   He insists the tariffs are just “medicine” that Americans must take to Make America Great Again under his watch, but his policies are starting to backfire. His ratings are plummeting in the courts of American public opinion, as independent voters withdraw their support rapidly, leaving Trump this weekend at the lowest approval rating ever by any US president three months into office.

   Many Christians will end Easter continuing to believe that Christ ascended to the heavens only to forever care for Christians, “for ever and ever, Amen.”

   As such, it’s also very likely that most will never believe what President Donald Trump’s Second Coming will actually mean for them -until they (like everyone else) really start feeling the effects of the global trade war he’s unleashed where they’ll hurt more- in pockets and stomachs worldwide.