In a flap between Trump and the pope, guess who takes the high road
Popes and kings have often rubbed one another the wrong way.
Consider Henry VIII. When Catherine of Aragon couldn’t produce a male heir for the obese British king, he grew infatuated with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn. Pope Clement VII stalled for years on granting a divorce. So, the monarch broke with the Roman church, appointed a Protestant clergyman as the Archbishop of Canterbury, got his divorce from him and married the heavily pregnant Anne.
Then, in 1534, Parliament passed a law making Henry the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The randy ruler also soon had Boleyn beheaded and married four more times. The fates of the six were not happy: “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” For his sins, Clement’s successor excommunicated Henry in 1538 and the king died nine years later.
Three centuries earlier, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II went to war twice against papal armies, battling them in 1229 and 1230 and again in the 1240s. Pope Gregory IX had excommunicated Frederick a couple times and taken his lands in Italy while the king was off on crusades. His successor, Pope Innocent IV, later again excommunicated the emperor. In their war of words, the popes called Frederick “the antichrist,” and he, in turn, labeled Innocent the same, adding that the pope’s name was “the mark of the beast,” arguing that his initials equaled the Roman letters for the Satanic 666.
So, in comparison, the contretemps between the obese would-be monarch, Donald J. Trump, and Pope Leo XIV seems like small beer. Certainly, it’s as paltry and petty as Trump himself, who demonstrated his anger, irrationality and knack for non-sequiturs as he took on the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics in a Truth Social post.
While Trump hurled personal insults, calling Leo “WEAK on crime and terrible for Foreign Policy,” and accusing him of “catering to the Radical Left,” the pope preferred to take a higher road. Speaking to reporters at the beginning of a 10-day tour to four African nations, Leo said: “I have no fear, neither of the Trump administration, nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel. And that’s what I believe I am called here to do.”
Leo said he had “no intention to debate” Trump. “I am not a politician,” he told reporters, as he defended his earlier remarks asking the world to end “the madness of war.” He added: “The message is the same: to promote peace.”
The pope did offer a slight jab, however. When he was asked specifically about Trump’s comments on Truth Social, Leo said: “It’s ironic — the name of the site itself. Say no more.”
For all the small-mindedness in Trump’s blast, though, what is astonishing – if consistent – is his egocentrism. It’s all – and always – about him, of course.
Leo, the first American-born pope, was chosen by the global College of Cardinals last May not because he headed the worldwide Augustinian order of priests or because he is an expert on canon law who taught as a seminary professor while ministering in Peru for a decade. No, according to Trump, the now-70-year-old was “a shocking surprise” who owes his appointment to Trump.
“He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump,” the president posted. “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”
The pope, Trump added, should be “thankful” to him – though this randy and often-philandering royal wannabe made it clear he doesn’t “want” the Chicago-born pontiff leading the Church (as if he has the say-so).
“And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.”
Never mind that Trump was elected his second time with less than half the popular vote, 49.8 percent to 48.3 percent for Kamala Harris, a margin of less than 2.3 million votes. And just what crime and stock markets have to do with the pope is a mystery, one perhaps clear only in Trump’s unsettled mind.
Leo, for his part, has avoided direct criticism of Trump in most of his admonitions about the president’s military adventurism.
In his opening months as pontiff, he quietly dodged an early invitation from Trump to visit Washington. But in January, Leo delivered a speech voicing concern about the Trump administration’s capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.
As The New York Times reported, his admonishments on the war in Iran have grown more pointed as the conflict has continued, and as Trump administration officials began invoking theology to justify the war that Trump ordered up.
First, he appeared sour on efforts by Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to portray the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran as a Christian mission. Hegseth, a supporter of a peculiar Christian sect, asked the American people to pray “every day, on bended knee” for a military victory in the Middle East “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
The pope saw things differently. In a homily during a Mass on the Thursday morning before Easter, the pope said that the Christian mission had often been “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.”
Then, on Easter Sunday, he renewed his call for peace. “On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars,” Leo told tens of thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
“We tend to consider ourselves powerful when we dominate, victorious when we destroy our equals, great when we are feared,” the pope said at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome. “God has given us an example — not of how to dominate, but of how to liberate; not of how to destroy life, but of how to give it.”
In late March the pope warned against invoking the name of Jesus for battle, saying in a Sunday homily that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
After Trump threatened to wipe out “a whole civilization” in Iran, the pope said that “this threat against the whole population of Iran” was “really not acceptable.” He urged citizens to contact their political leaders to ask them to “to work for peace and to reject war always.”
As the Times noted, Trump’s angry reaction to the soft-spoken Leo, who was born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, showed “how differently two of the world’s most powerful Americans handle conflict.” The paper noted: “One pleads for resolution, while the other reflexively increases the temperature.”
While the pope mostly kept his comments focused on issues, Trump has preferred to make them personal.
“I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA,” the president posted. “He gets it, and Leo doesn’t!”
Lou Prevost, the eldest brother of the pope, has repeatedly praised Trump in online posts, applauding his attacks on the trans community and the Democratic Party, and once even shared a video that referred to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a “c–t.”
“These f—ing liberals crying about tariffs is just unreal,” read the caption under the video, posted by someone else and reported on by the Daily Beast. “Do they not know that there is a thing called video? Just listen to what this drunk c— has to say in the mid-90’s long before her husband had grindr dates.”
Prevost’s efforts, first noted by the Daily Beast last May 2025, quickly earned him an invitation to the White House, and to a Mar-a-Lago bash hosted by the president in December.
But today some of Trump’s latest postings are not sitting well with others in the MAGA base, as The Washington Post reported. Several were offended by Trump’s post of an image depicting him in Christ-like robes, holding a glowing orb and blessing an ailing man.
“I don’t know if the President thought he was being funny or if he is under the influence of some substance or what possible explanation he could have for this OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy,” wrote Megan Basham, a prominent conservative Protestant Christian writer and commentator. “But he needs to take this down immediately and ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God.”
The president has since had the image removed.
Isabel Brown, a Catholic podcaster with the Daily Wire outlet and a conservative influencer allied with the Trump White House, also spoke out against it. “This post is, frankly, disgusting and unacceptable, but also a profound misreading of the American people experiencing a true and beautiful revival of faith in Christ in the midst of our broken culture,” Brown wrote.
David Brody, an evangelical journalist with the Christian Broadcasting Network, blasted the image, as the Times reported. “This goes too far. It crosses the line,” Brody wrote on social media. “A supporter can back the mission AND reject this simultaneously.”
The newspaper also noted that Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, a Catholic Democrat from the Detroit suburbs, called the image “deeply offensive and disrespectful.” She added: “This is not a matter of politics or humor — it touches the core of our faith. Our Lord represents humility, sacrifice, compassion, empathy and truth. Everything he is not.”
After Pope Francis died last spring, Trump kicked up similar dust when he posted an image of himself as pontiff. He had a ready answer when reporters asked who he would like to take the job in Rome, according to the Times. “I’d like to be pope,” he joked to reporters at the White House. “That would be my number one choice.”
For the notoriously humorless Trump – now clearly stung by Pope Leo — the joke was likely more than half-serious.
