The Catholic Church, Politics and Challenge of the New Populism

Elections in Poland (2015) and in the United States (2016) show an interesting puzzle. Candidates who have finally won declare themselves as practicing religious people. In Poland, members of the Law and Justice Party many times participated the religious services and declared that the Catholic Social Doctrine is very important for their program. Also Mr. Donald Trump as a candidate in the presidential elections in the US stressed that religion is an important factor of the American identity. In the same time, Vatican raised two important issues: refuges and responsibility of all nations to help them. The Law and Justice party was strongly against being host for the refugees in Poland and wan both presidential and parliamentary elections. Referring to the second issue, Pope Francis has said that person who wants to build walls between countries should not be a leader for anyone. Mr. Trump who wants to build the wall between the US and Mexico won the presidential elections. This paper’s aim is to explain origins of these discrepancies between Vatican, local communities of Catholics and politicians. It tries to show why members of the Catholics communities voted for the candidates, whose political propositions were against the official Church’s statement.