Donald Trump soon The outbursts against the pope—”WEAK on Crime, and bad on Foreign Policy,” he said in one of his Social Truth posts—have raised new questions from observers about the president’s sanity and his limitless capacity for blasphemy. His attacks also echoed old fears about the Vatican as a secret rival of US power. But above all, Trump’s post betrayed a misunderstanding of who the pope is and what Catholics believe he can do.
The immediate cause of Trump’s anger was Saturday’s peace eve the pope welcomed at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, during which Leo—the first American-born pope—prayed for a kingdom of “dignity, understanding, and forgiveness,” to serve as “a defense against the illusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is increasingly unpredictable and violent.” Although the pope did not mention Trump by name, but his reference to the illusion of omnipotence can be seen as a clear rebuke of the president’s weakness in starting a war without a real explanation to the public and without a clear end.
Trump’s anger was predictable, but his assumption that Leo was merely expressing a political opinion revealed a lack of Christian fundamentalism. Claims of omnipotence that compete with God’s unlimited power are based on the faith’s narrative about sin: Satan fell from grace after trying to usurp God’s throne for himself; Adam and Eve conspired to steal the divine wisdom reserved for God alone. When Leo advised believers—in statements that were addressed to everyone, not just the Trump administration—to reject the false notion that they can claim unlimited control over the world, he was defending spiritual humility, a fundamental element of Christianity.
Perhaps no quality is more foreign to Trump than humility, spiritual or otherwise. Trump reinforced this point by following his tirade against the pope with a Social Truth post featuring an AI image of him as Jesus, dressed in flowing robes and illuminated by heavenly light, tending to the sick, lying in bed against soldiers and an American flag. Seemingly designed to challenge the pope, this image insulted not only Catholics but Christians more broadly: Disrespectfully posing as Jesus is a blatant act of desecration. Even Trump’s religious supporters have rushed to air their feelings of betrayal. Douglas Wilson, a Calvinist pastor who counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among his followers, immediately called the statue “blasphemous.”
The most generous reading of Trump’s decision to publish the photo is not that he deliberately dreamed up a new heresy, but that he acted without thinking about Christianity and its principles at all—despite the fact that Republicans have spent decades building political alliances with conservative Christians. Likewise, when Trump launched an investigation against the pope, he probably didn’t consider what this might mean for Catholics, including those who have ardently supported him—like Vice President Vance, who will soon release a book about his Catholic faith. Trump has managed to alienate many Christians who put him in power by exposing the limits of his understanding, not only of Catholicism but of Christian theology. (Perhaps angered by this response, the president quickly deleted the photo and insisted that he thought it showed him as a doctor.)
Catholics believe we are governed by a hierarchy that takes its authority directly from the word of God. The role of the pope is not to impose his personal will on the masses, but to teach the faithful how to follow Jesus in their own lives. Apostolic succession—the idea that the testimony of the 12 apostles has been passed down by the bishops in an unbroken chain, connecting today’s Catholic leaders to the early leaders of the Church—is a central Catholic teaching, and it directly connects the pope to those who knew Jesus personally and continued his teachings. Trump can jealously criticize any authority that competes with his authority, but for Catholics the pope is not a king but a servant. sthe grass of God’s servantsor the servant of God’s servants.
Teaching believers is an aspect of that service. The Bible provides principles for living a good life and making good decisions, but those lessons are often abstract, and life presents countless situations in which the right Christian choice is unclear. Part of the Church’s role is to help Christians understand how the precepts of faith translate into practical moral realities, and politics is only a branch of applied ethics. So the pope not only has the right to express his opinion on political issues but he has the duty to do so, and in fact popes always have. Pope Leo XIII, who served in the early 20th century and whose papal title inspired that of the current pope, wrote the famous letter. New things, which dealt with industrialization by rejecting unrestrained capitalism and defending the needs of workers. In 2003, Pope John Paul II condemned the Iraq War as “a victory for humanity.” Pope Leo XIV’s remarks follow in that tradition.
Trump probably could not predict how offensive his positions were to Christians and Catholics in particular, but the leaders of the Catholic Church in the United States, including those who have faithfully supported Trump, immediately saw that the president had crossed the line. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, administrator of the United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference, issued a statement saying that he is “disappointed that the President decided to write those words that insult the Holy Father” and defended the pope as “a priest of Christ who speaks the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.” Bishop Robert Barron, a longtime supporter who smiled happily at a White House Easter meeting when Trump’s spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain, compared the president to Jesus, similarly condemned Trump’s outburst as “inappropriate and disrespectful,” adding, “It is the right of the Pope to explain and define the principles of Catholic life.”
Pope Leo, for his part, responded to Trump’s sarcasm calmly. He told the journalists who were on the papal plane yesterday that he is not afraid of the Trump administration and even “will not shy away from announcing the Gospel message,” then he invited all people to find “ways to avoid war whenever possible. He added that speaking about the Gospel message “is what the Church works for.” This, he said, is a battle that Trump will not win.
Trump, who is used to playing the bully to forge deals, is probably realizing that his tactics are useless against a government that has little need for funding. The Vatican is a 2,000-year-old international institution with a divine mission. The 250-year-old United States is still only a footnote, and the term of this president is not just an idea.
