President Donald Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV on social media this Sunday, stating that the first American pope in history should “stop pandering to the radical left.” The Republican’s attack is an extraordinary frontal attack against the other largest American in the world, the head of the Catholic Church. And the only one capable of overshadowing him.
Trump’s rage comes from , some of it unequivocally directed at Trump, although without naming him at any point, which . “Pope Leo is WEAK in the face of crime and disastrous in matters of foreign policy,” the president wrote this afternoon on social networks.
In another post, the president stated: “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—BY AN OVERWHELMING MAJORITY.”
“I do not want a Pope who considers it acceptable for Iran to possess a nuclear weapon,” he also wrote in Truth Social, in response to the pontiff’s recriminations towards his policies and his explosive rhetoric against Iran. On Tuesday, the Pope condemned the president’s threat to annihilate an “entire civilization” if Iran did not open the Strait of Hormuz by the deadline he had imposed; He has also opposed the religious way Trump Administration officials have categorized the war, as if it were a Christian mission.
Shortly afterward, Trump spoke to reporters at Joint Base Andrews, where he had landed from Florida aboard the Air Force One. “I don’t think he’s doing a very good job,” declared the Republican; “I am not an admirer of Pope Leo.”
The White House tenant’s publication came after Leo XIV denounced over the weekend the “delusion of omnipotence” that is fueling the United States and Israel’s war against Iran, and .
The pontiff presided over the evening celebration of the Prayer Vigil for Peace in St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday, at the same time that the United States and Iran were meeting face to face in Pakistan, with the aim of preserving a fragile ceasefire. The Pope, born in the United States but who has spent half his life in Peru, did not mention the United States or Trump by name in his sermon. However, the tone and message seemed directed at the president and US officials, who have boasted of their country’s military superiority and justified the war in religious terms.
Thus, for example, last Friday, the Pope published the following message on his social networks: “God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today throw bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or for times of Peace, which only comes from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue between peoples.” Even more unequivocal was another message, two days before: “The wars that stain the present with blood are the result of the idolatry of power and money. Let us not get used to the clamor of weapons and images of war! Peace is not just a balance of power. It is the work of purified hearts, of those who see others as brothers and sisters to protect, not as enemies to defeat.”
It is not lost on anyone that the election of Leo “León should be grateful, because, as everyone knows, his election was a major surprise,” Trump declared. “He was not on any list of candidates for pope; the Church appointed him solely because he was an American, believing that this would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump,” he said, speaking of himself in a majestic third person.
The open confrontation that stems from Trump’s words will probably fall on deaf ears in the Vatican, an institution that, unlike the current US Administration, does understand the value of true diplomacy to the point of forging a category of its own, Vatican diplomacy.
