Why Trump’s public feud with Pope is taking away valuable support from the US president

Trump continues attack on the Pope and NATO It is not uncommon for United States President Donald Trump to face criticism from Catholic leaders. His hardline immigration policies, promised during the campaign and celebrated by supporters, have drawn condemnation from church leaders. For months, this has put the U.S. Catholic Church hierarchy at odds with more right-leaning rank-and-file Catholics. But the widespread negative reaction in recent days, triggered by the American president’s attack on Pope Leo the 14th on Sunday (12) and the release of an image generated by artificial intelligence (AI), in which Trump appears as a Christ-like figure, with light radiating from his hands, is of a different nature. What draws attention is the origin of some of this criticism: conservative and loyal Catholic allies. They are dissatisfied not only with Trump’s public friction with Pope Leo the 14th, but, on a deeper level, with the war against Iran. The repercussion of Trump’s long attack on social media on the first American pope, described as too liberal and “soft on crime”, combined with the image generated by artificial intelligence, has consolidated a change of opinion among many conservative Catholics since the beginning of the war on February 28. “I pray that all of this makes it clear to people that we are not looking for a national leader, we are not looking for those who have the most money or the most guns. We are looking for Christ,” said Bishop Joseph Strickland. The words come from a man who, just last year, participated in a prayer event to “consecrate” the president’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. In 2024, Strickland gave the keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the largest conservative event in the US, where Trump was the guest of honor. In 2020, he spoke at a march of Trump supporters calling for the reversal of the election results. He has been a loyal supporter of Donald Trump, through thick and thin. In fact, his explicit political alignment and open confrontation with the late Pope Francis (1936-2025) contributed to his removal from office as bishop of the city of Tyler, Texas. Still, faced with sharply divergent narratives between the U.S. and the Vatican about the war in Iran and the broader Middle East picture, Strickland made a rare break with the administration. “I do not believe this conflict meets the criteria of a just war. I am with the pope and his call for peace. This is not about politics. This is about moral truth,” he told the BBC, adding that the scale of death and suffering faced by innocent civilians prevents the war from being considered “just.” More than that, he criticized the way the US conducts the conflict and encouraged other Catholics to do the same. “It gets very dark when religion is used to justify immoral behavior… using religion to justify, especially, dropping bombs contradicts what faith stands for,” Strickland said. When asked about Trump’s attack on Pope Leo the 14th and the image some have called “AI Jesus,” which Trump said he interpreted to mean a doctor rather than Jesus, Strickland said he felt it was his “duty” to remind the American president of the Gospel according to Matthew. He cited a passage that teaches that supreme power belongs to Christ, not to any man. “When world leaders forget this truth, everyone is in danger,” he said. This change in the way conservative Catholics view the US president brings political risks, as he has increased his support among this group in the 2024 election. According to the Pew Research Center, the picture remains complex. Racial origin played a relevant role: 62% of white Catholics voted for Donald Trump (Republican Party) and 37% for Kamala Harris (Democratic Party), while 41% of Hispanic Catholics voted for Trump and 58% for Harris. Still, there was a general tendency for Catholics to come closer to the Republican Party of which Trump is a part, albeit with sharp divisions. Historically, data suggests that when it comes to worldview, politics weighs more heavily than faith for many American Catholics. They are largely divided along partisan lines, says Greg Smith, senior associate director of religion research at the Pew Research Center. Catholics in the US have groups that hold highly polarized positions on issues such as abortion and immigration. Therefore, a convergence like this between left-wing and right-wing Catholics around the war in Iran is rare. The way they evaluate the head of the Catholic Church reinforces this picture. Pope Francis was much more popular among Catholic Democrats than Catholic Republicans, while Pope Leo has high support from both, according to the Pew Research Center. Pope Francis was often seen as a spontaneous progressive, who sometimes alienated traditionalist Catholics, for example, by restricting Mass in Latin, a measure that Pope Leo 14 made more flexible. The pope is not immune to a certain level of criticism, said Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut and an influential voice on the Catholic “right” in the US. “The pope is the pope, we owe him a certain degree of deference, but I don’t think Catholicism demands the obedience of corpses. We are living people, capable of thinking,” he said. Wolfgang went from cautious pragmatism toward Trump, interested in repealing abortion laws, to more enthusiastic support. He is a strong supporter of mass deportation policies and the type of Catholic nationalism represented by JD Vance. Still, he is now harshly criticizing the US president’s behavior towards Pope Leo 14. “President Trump doesn’t understand how Catholicism works. The Pope is not just a head of state, he is the Vicar of Christ. Attacks against him are received as attacks on the Church itself. The more he attacks the Pope, the more his support among Catholic voters will fall,” Wolfgang told the BBC. Wolfgang also stated that his faith led him to challenge U.S. Catholic bishops when they criticized President Trump’s immigration policies, but that same faith causes him to oppose this war. “When President Trump goes around talking about ending Iranian civilization, or Secretary [Pete] Hegseth delivers a bloodthirsty prayer that is unrecognizable to Catholics, so it is completely natural for conservative Catholics to align themselves with Pope Leo the 14th,” he said. Shortly after the first U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recited a highly controversial prayer at a Pentagon service in which he spoke of “overwhelming violence” and “justice carried out quickly and without remorse.” In his writings, Wolfgang tends to reserve his criticism. more harshly on the Catholic “left”, but assesses that the Iran issue has, to some extent, united different groups, in part due to the clarity of the pope’s anti-war message. Unusually, no senior member of the Catholic clergy in the US has publicly declared support for the war in Iran. Even Robert Barron, bishop of Winona-Rochester and a key Trump ally, has demanded that the American president apologize to the pope for his furious attack, a request that was rejected. Greydanus, a deacon and prominent commentator, also sees this unusual convergence of opinions. He assesses that one of the factors was the US’s “subversion” of the principles of “Just War Theory” (bellum iustum), a doctrine that establishes when it is legitimate to go to war and how such a conflict should be conducted. “I welcome the clarity of the choice that is being presented to Catholics,” says Greydanus. The Vatican has maintained the interpretation that what has unfolded in recent weeks is not, in any way, a clash between Pope Leo the 14th and President Donald Trump, but rather a pope who clearly resorts to his faith to oppose the logic of this war. But, when the president stated that “an entire civilization would die” in the Iran, the pope responded directly, calling the threat “absolutely unacceptable.” “There is an important difference between defying a man and questioning the principle that makes war possible,” said the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education. “It doesn’t unite everyone, of course,” says Reverend Spadaro. “But Pope Leo the 14th moves the Catholic debate away from a purely partisan logic.” backtracking and deleting the post. There are also questions about the motive for the attack on Pope Leo 14. To some, it seemed like an attempt to weaken the pontiff’s opposition to the war. Instead, it is cited, named, contested; sign that your words matter.”

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