President Donald Trump has unleashed a diatribe in opposition to Pope Leo XIV on Reality Social that brings the simmering imbroglio between the 2 strongest Individuals on the earth to a boil.
On one facet, there’s the New York-born chief govt of the planet’s paramount army superpower. On the opposite, Chicago-born Robert Prevost, supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church and chief religious adviser of almost 1.4 billion believers. Their battlefield could appear world, however the final objective is parochial: the hearts and minds and votes of U.S. Catholics.
Trump fired off his social media broadside within the early hours of his Monday morning. It referred to as Leo “WEAK” on a number of fronts: Iran’s potential nuclear weapons, crime, immigration and politics. He stated he prefers Louis Prevost, Leo’s brother, who’s “all MAGA. Louis will get it, and Leo doesn’t!” He additionally implied that Leo owed him as a result of he’d solely been elected pope as a result of the School of Cardinals “thought that might be one of the simplest ways to take care of President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t within the White Home, Leo wouldn’t be within the Vatican.”
That final little bit of vitriol jogged my memory of how I obtained this pope mistaken earlier than his election. On Might 3, 2025, simply because the School of Cardinals ready to vote, Trump and the White Home circulated a portrait of the president as the brand new pope.
I brashly predicted that “The White Home’s tasteless AI joke … may very well play into the politics of the conclave — making it tougher for an precise American cardinal to ascend to the papal throne. The church nonetheless remembers the long-ago Avignon papacy as a time when the pontiffs loved much less energy having come below the sway of French monarchs. Fashionable cardinals are unlikely to elect a pontiff who may be manipulated by Washington.”
Effectively, I proved to be no prophet, however Trump took Leo’s elevation personally. The friction between the pair proves that one query raised by that 14th-century drama stays legitimate: If believers had to decide on, would they facet with their king (or secular ruler) or their pope?
Coincidentally, the Avignon papacy was central to a Trump vs. Leo prequel that blew up on social media final week. The viral spasm — virtually out of a Dan Brown novel — was impressed by a narrative within the Free Press, wherein unnamed Vatican officers described a tense assembly between Pentagon officers and the papal nuncio — the pope’s ambassador in Washington, D.C. (Each side stated the dialog had been cordial and the descriptions of it within the article had been exaggerated and inaccurate.)
In keeping with the Free Press, representatives of the Division of Protection warned the nuncio that “the US has the army energy to do no matter it desires — and that the Church had higher take its facet.” Amid the dialog, an unnamed Pentagon official cited the Avignon papacy, which happened 700 years in the past. It might have been the sort of historic reference the two,000-year-old establishment would acknowledge as a menace.
That is what occurred again in 1307: Philip IV, king of France, took umbrage at Pope Boniface VIII and despatched his forces to abduct and depose the pontiff. The monarch then moved the papacy to Avignon in southern France the place succeeding popes remained below the sway of his kingdom for greater than six a long time. Seven Frenchmen occupied the Throne of St. Peter, the longest stretch of non-Italian popes in historical past, unmatched even by Leo and his three predecessors — Francis of Argentina, Benedict XVI of Germany and John Paul II of Poland. (The pope additionally holds Peruvian citizenship, the results of his years as a missionary within the South American nation. It is usually a requirement that each one rating Catholic bishops in Peru be residents, which Prevost turned upon being elevated to Bishop of Chiclayo.)
Avignon occurred because the kingdoms of Europe started pushing again in opposition to an imperious papacy, which had been increasing in affect for about 250 years. It wasn’t a superb time to be pope. In his “Inferno,” Dante destined Boniface VIII — who’d issued a decree declaring that the papacy was the final word authority on the earth — to the eighth circle of hell. Lookup Guelphs and Ghibellines if you wish to fall right into a rabbit gap.
All that might culminate in Martin Luther’s nailing of his indictment of the corruption and errors of Roman Catholicism on the doorways of the Fort Church in Wittenberg, Germany, sparking the Protestant Reformation and spurring extra of Western Europe to go for their very own nation-states as an alternative of the overarching Christendom represented by the pope in Rome.
At this time, the papacy is resurgent as a transnational authority that has been capable of disrupt empires (John Paul II and the Soviet Union) in addition to stir consciences. It’s intriguing that the supposedly contentious assembly described within the Free Press concerned the Division of Protection and the papal nuncio. The pope’s ambassador is greater than a diplomat; he oversees the choice of new bishops and officers within the U.S. hierarchy — who, of their flip, assist information the American laity. Again in 2016, the Catholic hierarchy within the U.S. trended conservative: proud of the doctrinaire Benedict and funky to the comparatively woke Francis. Their social and political beliefs echoed amongst a lot of their congregations, which skewed Republican. Certainly, 56% of American Catholic voters forged their ballots for Trump in 2024.
The lineup of bishops has reached a distinct steadiness now due to Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the nuncio who met with the Pentagon officers. That’s in all probability what alarms Trump: A current ballot signifies that his Catholic help has now fallen beneath 50%, with 40% strongly disapproving of the president’s job efficiency.
Pierre retired final month after a decade within the Vatican’s Washington workplace. His successor Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia, who’s been the Holy See’s everlasting observer to the United Nations since 2019, will handle the selection of successors to a dozen U.S. bishops — and their stances on doctrine and tips on how to propagate these teachings might properly decide whether or not U.S.-Vatican relations are accommodating or confrontational.
The pope had been discreet about not citing Trump by identify. However there was little doubt of his goal given the timing of a few of his public statements. In his Palm Sunday homily, delivered as U.S. assaults in opposition to Iran grew, Leo quoted the prophet Isaiah, “Despite the fact that you make many prayers, I can’t hear: your arms are filled with blood.” And Leo didn’t have to call the American president when he stated, “There has additionally been this menace in opposition to your entire folks of Iran. And that is actually unacceptable.”
We could but see AI animation of U.S. Particular Forces rappelling down St. Peter’s dome to convey regime change to the Holy See. The Trump administration and the MAGA motion have a fair proportion of Catholic illustration, from first woman Melania Trump to Vice President JD Vance to the controversial commentator Candace Owens. The rollout of the pontiff’s new battalion of bishops will power them to make tough decisions. If any MAGA believer has qualms, the White Home posted an AI-generated picture to metal their religion: Trump as a Jesus-figure therapeutic the sick. (Replace: The White Home has apparently eliminated the picture from its Reality Social account.)
So, nation or God? Leo made his choice clear early on, certainly quickly after his election. In Might 2025, Vance invited him to this 12 months’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence. The primary pope from the U.S. declined, selecting as an alternative to spend that day on the Italian island of Lampedusa with refugees and migrants.
For now, Leo is off to go to a number of African nations. When requested by Italian journalists on his aircraft about Trump’s put up, the pontiff reportedly stated, “I’m not afraid of the Trump administration … and I’ll proceed talking with a loud voice in opposition to battle.”
