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  "path": "/news/1991310/pope-leo-says-he-is-not-afraid-of-trump-after-us-presidents-broadside",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-13T13:06:31.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.dawn.com",
  "tags": [
    "World",
    "immigration policies",
    "posted",
    "Leo",
    "madness of war",
    "threat to destroy Iranian civilisation",
    "speech",
    "not a Christian",
    "disgraceful",
    "denied reports",
    "Middle East",
    "Venezuela."
  ],
  "textContent": "US President Donald Trump has criticised Pope Leo as “terrible” in a rare direct attack on the pontiff, who responded that he had “no fear” of the White House administration and would continue to denounce the horrors of war.\n\nThe president’s comments came after the pope had spoken out, with growing force, against the US-Israeli war on Iran and the Trump administration’s immigration policies.\n\n“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social late on Sunday.\n\nTrump later posted an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus, with the US flag and the Statue of Liberty in the background.’\n\n> ## ‘Someone has to stand up’, Pope says\n\nPope Leo, the first pontiff from the US, responded on Monday by saying he would keep raising his voice against conflict, adding that the Christian message, rooted in the primacy of peace, was being “abused”.\n\nIt is extremely unusual for a pope, who leads Catholics around the world, to answer a foreign leader publicly.\n\n“I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems,” Leo told _Reuters_ aboard a papal flight to Algiers, where he is embarking on a 10-day tour to four African countries.\n\n“Too many people are suffering in the world today,” he said. “Too many innocent people are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say there’s a better way.”\n\nSpeaking to other reporters, the pope said: “I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly.”\n\n> ## Catholics defend pope\n\nCatholics on social media lambasted Trump for attacking the leader of the 1.4-billion-member Catholic Church, who they believe is the successor of St. Peter, one of Jesus’ 12 apostles.\n\n“There is no ambiguity about the situation now,” Massimo Faggioli, an expert on the papacy, told _Reuters_.\n\n> He compared the comments to efforts by the leaders of Germany and Italy during World War Two to draw the late Pope Pius XII to support their causes.\n\n“Not even Hitler or Mussolini attacked the pope so directly and publicly,” said Faggioli.\n\nArchbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was disheartened by Trump’s comments.\n\n“Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls, he said in a statement.\n\n## Trump says Leo should ‘get his act together’\n\nLeo, originally from Chicago, is known for choosing his words carefully.\n\nHe has emerged as an outspoken critic of the conflict with Iran in recent weeks and decried the “madness of war” in a peace appeal on Saturday.\n\nLast year, he questioned whether the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies were in line with the Church’s pro-life teachings, and called for a “deep reflection” about the way migrants are being treated in the United States.\n\n“Someone who says, ‘I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States’, I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” the pontiff said in September.\n\nTrump wrote in his post on Sunday that “Leo should get his act together as Pope” and “focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician”.\n\nTrump’s broadside against Leo also accused him of being “weak on nuclear weapons”, several days after the pope said the US president’s threat to destroy Iranian civilisation was “truly unacceptable”.\n\n> ## Pope says he is not a politician\n\nIn a speech on Palm Sunday last month in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, the pope said God rejected the prayers of leaders who start wars and have their “hands full of blood”, calling the conflict in Iran “atrocious”.\n\nLeo has also called on Trump to find an “off-ramp” to end the conflict and “decrease the amount of violence”.\n\nIn his post, Trump suggested that Leo was only elected to lead the Catholic Church last year “because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”.\n\nLeo said on Monday that he was not a politician and did not want to be drawn into a debate with Trump.\n\n“The message of the Church, my message, the message of the Gospel: Blessed are the Peacemakers. I do not look at my role as being political, a politician,” he said.\n\n> Trump also had a rocky relationship with Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, who criticised Trump’s immigration policy proposals when he first ran for president and suggested Trump was “not a Christian”.\n\nTrump had called Francis “disgraceful” in early 2016.\n\n## Rejecting a rift\n\nWashington and the Vatican have rejected reports of a rift.\n\nOn Friday, a Vatican official denied reports that a top Pentagon official gave the church’s envoy to the United States a “bitter lecture” over Pope Leo’s criticisms of the Trump administration.\n\nThe story in the _Free Press_ —which the Pentagon had already dismissed as “distorted” — reported that Cardinal Christophe Pierre was summoned in January to the Pentagon, where he was given a dressing-down by US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby.\n\nThe military official reportedly told the cardinal that the US “has the military power to do whatever it wants — and that the Church had better take its side”.\n\nVatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement that “the account presented by certain media outlets regarding this meeting does not correspond to the truth in any way.”\n\nWhile both parties insist the meeting was cordial, the Holy See and the White House have openly been at odds over the Trump administration’s hardline mass deportation campaign — which the pope called “inhuman” — and the use of military force in the Middle East and Venezuela.",
  "title": "Pope Leo says he is not afraid of Trump after US president’s broadside"
}