Given all the problems US President Donald Trump has to deal with right now, few would have expected him to squeeze in a bizarre attack on Pope Leo XIV, leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, into the mix. However, if there is one way of describing Trump’s ongoing stint in power, it would be creating problems and controversies where there really should not be any. As such, on Sunday night, Trump posted a diatribe on Truth Social about how Pope Leo is “weak” on crime and “terrible” for foreign policy after the religious leader criticised Trump’s foreign and immigration policies. He also accused the pope of thinking it is okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, catering to the ‘Radical Left’ and claimed that he only became Pope because Trump was re-elected as president in 2024. Trump has a penchant for the farcical, but this is stretching the imagination in a way that is unusual even for him. For starters, even Iran does not think it is okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon and it is strange to twist a call for peace into a call for nuclear weapons. And how exactly is calling the US-Israeli war on Iran inhumane, which it is, and saying that the war must end, which it must, catering to the ‘Radical Left’. Many of Trump’s own supporters have criticised this war and called for Trump to find a way out before he permanently sinks his own movement.
To make matters worse, Trump’s diatribe was paired with an extremely inappropriate image seeming to depict himself as a Jesus-like figure. The US president’s bizarre attempts to claim that the image showed him “as a doctor and had to do Red Cross” is so contrary to the obvious that it would be laughable if it were not so deeply offensive. These attacks on Pope Leo follow reports that a top Pentagon official gave the church’s envoy to the US a ‘bitter lecture’ over Pope Leo’s criticisms of the Trump administration, something the Vatican has officially denied. Trump has now deleted the controversial image, as even many of his own conservative supporters said he owed the Pope an apology. There has been no apology from Trump and, while the insulting image may be gone, the diatribe is still there. Sadly, this is not the first time Trump has started a feud with a Pope. His relationship with the late Pope Francis, Pope Leo’s predecessor, who often spoke against Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, was similarly acrimonious.
To his credit, Pope Leo is not backing down in the face of these attacks. In a forceful speech on Monday in Algiers, he denounced “neocolonial” world powers who are violating international law and claimed that he does not fear the Trump administration. Even Trump’s ostensible rivals in Iran have sided with the Pope, with MB Balighaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, honouring his fearless stand and praising his leadership for inspiring millions. Clearly, this is a fight that Trump is not going to win. A similar analogy could be drawn here with the war in Iran. In both cases, Trump ought to take a page from the Pope’s book, and strive for peace.
