The Pope’s First Anniversary Is Marked by More Sparring from the White House
The pope has responded to the war in Iran in stages, since responding to a reporter’s question on March 31, saying of the president: “I hope he is looking for a way out.” An eleven-day trip to Africa in April seemed destined to be a low-key affair (the Italian daily The Republic refused to send his correspondent to the Vatican), but a day before the start, Trump posted a rant against Leo on Truth Social, calling him “WEAK on crime” and “terrible on foreign policy.” A press briefing on board offered the pope the opportunity to respond. He took it by saying, “I am not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loud and clear about the message of the Gospel. » His remarks recall those of Pope Francis who, during a flight from Rio to Rome in 2013, responded to a question about an alleged “gay lobby” in the Vatican by asking: “If someone is gay, seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” They also recalled the exhortation with which John Paul II began his pontificate in 1978: “Do not be afraid!
In the media, the battle began: the president against the pope, and the White House fueled the story. Trump continued to denounce the Pope; On Monday, three days before Rubio’s scheduled hearing, the president told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, “I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people,” adding, “He thinks it’s very good that Iran has nuclear weapons.” » Vance, for his part, challenged Leo’s right to speak on political issues and implied that he did not understand the Catholic principles of what constitutes a just war. Leo, meanwhile, declared in Africa: “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging what is sacred into darkness and filth,” while noting that “the world is ravaged by a handful of tyrants.” Toward the end of the trip, Leo told reporters he had no interest in “trying to debate” the president, saying his comments were written weeks earlier. But, like the words spoken by John Paul II in Poland in 1979, the words spoken by Leo in 2026 addressed a global conflict in a direct, if indirect, way.
Leo’s willingness to confront Trump is striking in several ways. On the one hand, the American pope’s words appear to consolidate opposition to the war from European countries, which Trump had frightened in January by saying the United States would “take” Greenland from Denmark. Spain opposed the war in Iran from the start; Britain, Germany and Italy offered limited support – the last by refusing to allow American warplanes to stop at an air base in Sicily (arguing that the request had come too late). Today, a coalition of those who do not want it has strengthened. And the Pope, who could have made the Vatican a center of American interests, instead makes the Church a counterweight to the wealth and power of the United States.
Regardless, denunciations of war were a constant in Leo’s ministry (and in that of recent popes). A 1983 photo shows Prévost in a group of other young priests in Rome, one of whom holds a sign reading “AGOSTINIANI PER LA PACE.” The occasion was a protest against the Reagan administration’s plan, as part of an arms buildup in Europe, to station cruise missiles in Sicily. At twenty-eight, the future American pope publicly criticized American military power. On Tuesday evening, speaking to reporters as he left Castel Gandolfo to return to the Vatican, he rejected Trump’s assertion that he supported Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons for purely historical reasons. “If anyone wants to criticize me because I proclaim the Gospel, let them do it sincerely,” he said. “For years the Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt about that.”
Recent opinion polls suggest that Trump’s vitriol toward Leo — and his bizarre posting of an image of himself as a Jesus-like healer — has displeased Catholics of all political persuasions, including MAGA those. Leo, by contrast, strove to engage with conservative and traditionalist Catholics for much of his first year as pope. Last Saturday in Rome, for example, he had an audience with members of the Papal Foundation, a U.S.-based group of wealthy benefactors who support Vatican initiatives in developing countries. When the group met in Rome last spring, just before the conclave, CNN’s Christopher Lamb notes in a new book about Leo, one donor said that “this room could raise a billion to help the Church, provided we have the right pope.” The foundation’s board chairman is Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop emeritus of New York, who has made much of his friendship with President Trump, and its lay membership includes many tradition-minded Catholics, the type of whom Trump and the Republican Party have assiduously courted — and yet they have shown up to support the pontiff. (The foundation approved fifteen million dollars in grants for 2026, a record for the group.) In brief remarks, Leon stayed true to his message: “Christ desires his disciples to be instruments of peace,” he said. MAGA Pundits tried to drive a wedge between Leo and conservative Catholics, and the meeting suggested they were unsuccessful — and that Trump’s media barrage against the pope turned out to be a spectacular act of self-sabotage.
