After a column of white smoke in the rafters of the Sistine Chapel Announcing the arrival of a new pope last May, President Donald Trump celebrated the election of the first American-born leader of the Catholic Church, declaring it “a great honor for our country.” But now, the two most influential Americans on the world stage — Trump, leader of 340 million Americans, and Pope Leo
Following a pair of Trump posts Sunday on Truth Social — one a rambling attack that described Leo XIV as “terrible on foreign policy” and “weak on crime,” and the other a description of the president that equated him to Christ — Leo “I don’t want to get into a debate with him,” said the Pope before apparently doing so by adding: “I don’t think the Gospel message should be misinterpreted as some are doing.” Later, reflecting on one of Trump’s posts on Truth Social, he commented: “It’s ironic, the name of the site itself. No more needs to be said.”
An open war of words between a pope and an American president is unprecedented, according to veteran observers of the Catholic Church. “You have to go back to the Middle Ages, when kings and emperors cried out against the Pope in Rome and called him false,” said Marco Politi, a veteran Vatican observer and author. “There is simply no other similar recent example.” The moral authority of the Catholic Church has diminished substantially after decades of clerical abuse scandals, and the weight of a Pope’s words is no longer what it was.
However, according to observers, the risk of a direct confrontation with a sitting Pope is perhaps greater for Trump, who is not only facing the first American-born Pope, sbut also a spiritual reference for an important group of Republican voters: conservative white Catholics. And it does so in the middle of the year of mid-term legislative elections. On Monday, conservative Catholic leaders such as Bishop Robert Barron, a member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, expressed their rejection and called on the president to apologize to Leo XIV. “President Trump’s statements on Truth Social about the Pope were totally inappropriate and disrespectful.” Trump is no longer facing Pope Francis, the Argentine pontiff who many conservatives saw as carrying the knee-jerk anti-American prejudice of the Global South.
Now, Trump attacks a man from the south side of Chicago, a White Sox fan, who triumphed in politics and who expresses his criticism with the discretion and modesty of a small-town priest. “When political power turns against a moral voice, it is usually because it cannot contain it,” wrote the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary of the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education, in X. He added: “In this sense, (Trump’s) attack is a declaration of impotence.” For his part, Leo XIV faces a president who easily won the Catholic vote in 2024, and now risks being struck out. of something he has tried to avoid: a political partisan.
In recent weeks, Leo Leo
According to Vatican officials, the Pope is not anti-Trump, but a moral leader who defines the teachings of Jesus. It is those teachings, not the Pope, that come into conflict with an administration that has hidden behind religiosity. And it is the administration’s claims of divine support for its war that clearly violate those teachings. “Pope Leo XIV is speaking, with all the force he can, on behalf of the countless victims of the absurd wars that are being fought,” Cardinal Michael Czerny, the Vatican’s top human rights official, told The Washington Post.
Trump’s popularity among American Catholics has declined in the past year. And in Leo XIV, the president faces a figure objectively more popular than almost anyone he usually criticizes. In February, before the war with Iran, a Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll found that 41% of American Catholics approved of Trump, down from 48% a year earlier. On the other hand, a survey of NBCNews March 2026 showed that 42% of registered voters in the United States had a positive opinion of Pope Leo XIV, while 8% had a negative opinion and 50% were neutral or had no opinion.
“Donald Trump is clearly feeling the pressure of Leo XIV’s recent public condemnations of the Iran war and the need to promote peace rather than conflict,” said Elise Ann Allen, author of Pope Leo XIV: The Biography. “He is realizing that Leo
One thing is clear: After efforts by the Vatican and the administration to deny a rift following revelations of an unusual meeting of the Vatican’s top representative in the United States at the Pentagon in January, Trump’s frontal attack on social media on Sunday eliminated all pretense. “I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I am doing exactly what I was elected to do, FOR A CRUSHING VICTORY,” Trump wrote in Social Truth. Until relatively recently, Leo XIV had been more cautious with his statements about Trump than many liberals would have preferred.
His criticism of the government’s immigration crackdown last year also came as a shock to some conservative Catholics who seemed more willing, at least before the events in Minneapolis in January, to give the government’s hardline policies a chance. But the pope’s warnings have proven more pertinent amid an unpopular war that has driven up gasoline prices and other costs for Americans, sent the stock market tumbling and caused even staunch conservatives to criticize the White House. Leo XIV’s tone has also changed, as some liberals accused him of being too discreet on foreign affairs compared to Francis.
Leo XIV seems to have found his voice through a series of harsh criticisms of the war in Iran, unprecedented since he ascended the throne of Saint Peter. At the same time, his key collaborators in the United States are making important new calls to American Catholics to oppose the war. God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,” Leo XIV said on Palm Sunday. He quoted Isaiah 1:15, saying, “Though you pray many times, I will not listen to you; your hands are full of blood.” For a president, taking on the spiritual leader of the largest Christian denomination is a risky task, and liberals have been quick to take advantage, making the Pope their new cause célèbre on social media and promising to “ride into the dawn” if Trump touches “a single hair” on the Pope’s head.
In another Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump depicted himself as a Jesus-like figure next to the American flag, prompting recriminations reminiscent of his pre-conclave post last year, in which he introduced himself as the pope. The post was later deleted. “Total and utter blasphemy,” Joshua Charles, speechwriter for former Vice President Mike Pence, wrote in
“Where is the newly appointed Catholic Vice President, JD Vance?” asked Denise Murphy McGraw, national co-chair of Catholics Vote Common Good. “At a time when the Holy Father is being attacked and the dignity of the Church is undermined, silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.” Trump’s predecessors deliberately avoided confronting the popes. In 2004, when John Paul II appeared to allude to the recent Abu Ghraib prison scandal by calling it “deplorable events” in the presence of then-President George W. Bush, the American leader had nothing but praise for the pope.
However, Trump has always shown himself to be more audacious when confronting a pontiff. After Francis appeared to describe Trump as “not a Christian” for campaigning for a border wall with Mexico in 2016, Trump, then a presidential candidate, called the comment “shameful” and portrayed the pope as a “pawn” of Mexico. For years, Trump supporters and collaborators have believed that their man could go where no other president has gone: attacking the Vatican.
Just after Trump criticized Francis for his comment that he was “not a Christian,” his then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told ThePost: “I’m Catholic and my initial reaction is that maybe we don’t want to confront the Pope… But Mr. Trump has such a unique way of looking at things, such a keen intuition and instinct… He understood the situation much better than I ever could.” “I was shocked,” Lewandowski said at the time of Trump’s decision to confront the pope, “because it is the exact opposite reaction that anyone else who has run for public office would have.”
But outbursts like this could backfire, potentially alienating undecided moderate Catholics even further from him. If you are trying to win back the Catholic vote, this will only benefit Leo XIV’s cause, not yours.
However, Leo XIV is a very different pope from Francis. His election by the conclave last year appears to have anticipated the Vatican’s need for a counterweight to Trump on the world stage, someone who could not be dismissed as easily as Francis by his conservative adversaries in the United States. At the same time, Leo XIV is provoking a character known for his aggressiveness and who enjoyed strong Catholic support in his last elections. Exit polls showed Catholic voters favored Trump by a record 20 points, after supporting Joe Biden by five points in 2020.
A Pew Research Center poll showed a smaller but still significant shift, favoring Trump by 12 points in 2024, while in 2020 the vote was practically evenly divided. After months in which he seemed to avoid the wrath of the ultraconservatives that Francis faced, Leo XIV — who said near the beginning of his papacy that he would try to avoid partisan politics — now presents himself as a more obvious target.
But observers also point out that Leo XIV already enjoys more support in the hierarchy of the American Catholic Church than Francis did, and Trump’s attacks could reinforce that trend. “I would say that, at this moment, this does not pose any risk to the Pope,” Politi said.