On hearing that President Donald Trump was compared to Jesus Christ at a White House Easter luncheon, a New York priest beloved by everybody from firefighters to refugees, from construction workers to the homeless, had much the same reaction as any true Christian.
“Donald Trump is no more Jesus Christ than I am an astronaut on Pluto,” Father Brian Jordan said from Midtown Manhattan, where he serves as pastor of The Church of St. Francis of Assisi.
Jordan also voiced his opinion on the people who stood with Trump in the East Room on Wednesday, nodding in assent as televangelist Paula White-Cain, the head of the White House Department of Faith and the president’s so-called “spiritual adviser,” made the sacrilegious comparison.
“What we call them is the champions of clever sophistry; they say they’re Christians in word, but their actions do not prove it,” Jordan said. “They don’t care about the poor, immigrants, the disabled, or people with gender orientation issues or any of that. They’re insensitive to their needs.”
He went on, “Jesus would reach out and try to bring peace, not war, to Iran. And bring peace, not war, in Ukraine. And try to help out the hungry and malnourished in South Sudan and other parts of the world that have hunger issues.”
Jordan, 70, matches his words with deeds at his church on West 31st Street, where the entrance is flanked by the flags of the FDNY and NYPD. Back in 2001, Jordan anointed the dead at Ground Zero and held regular masses amid the toxic ruins during the long recovery effort. He founded the Workers’ Chapel at St. Francis, where once a year he dons a hard hat and says a memorial mass for construction workers who died on the job. He also established an Immigration Center and does all he can for those who fled poverty and oppression.
Since 1930, the parish has operated what is now the longest continually running breadline in America, feeding as many as 500 per day, with people lining up from 7 a.m. The parishioners are multicultural, as reflected by this week’s first Holy Thursday Mass delivered in English, Spanish, and Korean.
“The music was outstanding,” Jordan reported. “Music is the universal language.”
On Good Friday, Jordan presided at a Liturgy of the Word. He told the gathering about a Marine who was a lieutenant when the two met in the days after 9/11.
“He said, ‘We’re going to war in Iraq,’” Jordan recalled. “I said, ‘That’s not a just war.’ I said it’s not a war against mass destruction; it’s a war of mass deception.”
The Marine had gone on to fight in Iraq and is now a retired colonel. Jordan spoke with him again in recent days, and he told Jordan he has a son who is a Marine lieutenant on one of the ships now gathered near Iran, waiting to hear if they will be mounting a ground invasion.
“He said, ‘It’s proven the war in Iraq was unjust, and I know for a fact this war in Iran is unjust,’” Jordan told his parishioners. “He said, ‘This is my son. I don’t want him to get killed.’”
After he had told that story and the liturgy concluded, Jordan was approached by three young Marines.
“They said, ‘You got some balls saying that,’” Jordan recalled. “‘I said, ‘Well that’s what I believe.’”
The three asked him why he had mentioned Marines.
“I said, ‘I’m very partial to Marines,’” Jordan recalled.
Jordan told them his father had been in the Navy during World War II and had recounted collecting the bodies of dead Marines after the bloody Battle of Tarawa in 1943.
“I said, ‘All our life, we had a great respect for Marines,’” Jordan said, adding that he also had many friends who were Marines. He ran six times in the Marine marathon and had taken more than a few confessions from Marines—the details of which are not for sharing.
Jordan must have convinced the trio that he was legit and not just some knee-jerk liberal, that he was saying it like it is because that is the way it is.
“And all three Marines said, ‘You were right what you said,’” Jordan later told the Daily Beast.
Jordan emphasized to the Beast that none of the Marines he has encountered are suffering a loss of will.
“These are Marines; they want to go for the right reasons,” Jordan said. “They’re noble. But if you try to put them in an unjust war, don’t think you’re going to fool them. You’re not going to fool them.”
Jordan noted that the current president, who is sending Marines into harm’s way, did everything he could to avoid the Vietnam War.
“He won’t go to war, but sends other people to a war that’s not just,” Jordan said. “That’s not Christ-like.”
Jordan was then told by the Beast of the two American jets that had been downed in Iran.
“On Good Friday,” he replied.
