Bishop Robert Flock writes:

There is no area of human activity more in need of evangelization than the exercise of political power. This is also the area where our failures are greatest and the consequences of those failures most severe.

As an American who has served as a bishop in Latin America for 13 years, I have witnessed these failures and their consequences up close. And I see the same dynamics playing out in the United States under President Donald J. Trump today.

For example, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro both failed to serve their people and the common good in Venezuela by weaponizing the justice system….

In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario, have an absolute hold on power, to the point of expelling both Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity and the Poor Clares, as well as shutting down the Jesuit university in Managua….

In Bolivia, some opposition politicians, facing over 100 lawsuits brought against them by the socialist governments of Evo Morales and Luis Arce Catacora, died while in “preventive prison” before they could clear their names….

When we hear statements like that of Vice President JD Vance after the killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are protected by immunity when they violate the civil rights of citizens and immigrants, we can see that this process is running its course in the United States.

Immunity for ICE for inhumane enforcement tactics becomes impunity for a dictatorship that is consolidating power….

Those who crave power will also dehumanize and demonize their perceived enemies—saying they are “undeserving of our justice system,” calling them “garbage” and “vermin”—and commit ever greater atrocities against them….

Power is an addiction. And unchecked power destroys the souls of individuals and of nations.