President Donald Trump was quick to congratulate Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost on his historic election as Pope Leo XIV, Thursday just minutes after he stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
“It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country,” he continued. “I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!”
The warm message comes after Trump previously threw his support behind a more ideologically aligned contender. In April, he floated a different American cardinal—New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, considered a conservative within the church—as his preferred successor to Pope Francis.
“I must say we have a cardinal who happens to be out of a place called New York who’s very good,” he told reporters at the time.
Trump, who is not Catholic, may be trying to start off on the right foot with Pope Leo XIV after frequently clashing with Pope Francis, who often criticized the president and his policies.
However, it might already be too late for that, as Prevost’s social media appears to show he retweeted posts critical of Trump’s policies and administration.
(Prevost, a Chicago native, is seen as among the church’s progressive wing.)
Just this past February, Prevost retweeted an op-ed blasting Vice President J.D. Vance‘s views on Christianity.
In 2017, after Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending the US refugee program, and barring Syrian refugees specifically, Prevost reposted a tweet that said, “We’re banning all Syrian refugees? The men, women and children who *most* need help? What an immoral nation we are becoming. Jesus weeps.”
And in 2015, as Trump was running on his promise to “build a wall,” Prevost retweeted an op-ed titled “Why Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is so problematic”—a piece penned by none other than Dolan.
During Trump’s first term, Francis has similarly criticized the president’s plan to build a border wall, saying that anyone who thought only of building walls and not bridges “is not Christian.”
Trump shot back, calling it “disgraceful” for a religious leader to question his faith. Despite a cordial meeting in 2017, Francis continued to speak out against Trump’s policies, condemning his withdrawal from climate agreements and his rhetoric on immigration, even during his second term.
After Francis’ death on April 21, Trump inserted himself into the papal succession, declaring he was his own “number one choice” for the role and sharing an AI-generated image of himself in papal robes.
That sparked controversy among some Catholics, who slammed it as a sacrilegious move.
“Well, you know, it wasn’t good,” Dolan himself told a team of reporters Sunday, after arriving in Rome to participate in the conclave.
He then said: “brutta figura,” an Italian colloquialism that is used when someone embarrasses themselves.
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