President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV are in a war of wordsright now — when they should be allies, not enemies.
Both want peace, but the president intends to get it by winning a war against Iran, while the pope thinks the war isn’t worth fighting.
“I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump said Sunday on Truth Social, in a post blasting the pontiff as “weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy.”
With midterm elections just seven months away, Catholic voters suddenly find themselves in the crossfire between the Vatican and the White House.
Trump proved to be a magnet for Catholics two years ago: They accounted for more than 1 in 5 of his 2024 voters, and he bested Kamala Harris among Catholics by a commanding 12 percentage points.
Even in 2020, Catholics split almost evenly between Trump and a member of their own church.
Nobody would have guessed Joe Biden was Catholic to judge from his enthusiastic support for abortion rights, yet he attends Mass faithfully, and he did win the Catholic vote in 2020 — but only barely, 50% to Trump’s 49%.
The days when descendants of Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants cast their ballots for Democrats without a second thought are long gone, and thanks to Trump, Catholics have been realigning to the GOP.
But this spat with the pope could change that.
White Catholics have been in the forefront of the Republican realignment, but Trump made inroads with Hispanics and others, too.
And growing numbers of conservative Catholic converts have not only been a keystone in Trump’s electoral coalition, they’re essential to his administration as well — one even serves as his vice president.
JD Vance has just had a bruising experience leading negotiations with Iran; the next test of his diplomatic abilities may be trying to reconcile Trump with Pope Leo.
The VP has a book on the way in June, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” explaining his journey to the Catholic Church.
But this background makes Vance all the more aware of what the pope and the president are probably never going to agree on, and war is at the top of that list.
“We are not politicians, we don’t deal with foreign policy with the same perspective he might understand it,” the pope said Monday.
“But I do believe in the message of the gospel, as a peacemaker.”
Leo’s not unusual among modern popes in decrying war in almost any circumstance.
John Paul II was “no fan,” as Trump might put it, of George W. Bush’s war with Iraq.
Leo leaves no doubt at all about where he stands on the war Trump has been waging.
“God does not bless any conflict,” he tweeted last week.
“Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
Plenty of Catholics, as well as Protestants, wondered if the pope could really mean what he was saying — isn’t the Bible full of stories about warriors God blesses?
For that matter, popes themselves declared a crusade or two — or nine — in the Holy Land back in the day.
But Leo isn’t unusual among recent popes in taking a hard line against war, and the church’s teachings on the “Just War” doctrine are very strict.
He’s not in favor of nuclear proliferation, either — though he’s opposed to what Trump deems necessary to stop the terror-sponsoring state of Iran from obtaining the ultimate weapon.
There’s no easy diplomatic solution here: The pope and the president will continue to differ, and neither is going to keep quietabout it.
But they can and should cooperate where the big picture’s concerned, despite their disagreements.
When a pope and a president work together for peace, without compromising with evil, they can achieve what’s otherwise impossible.
Ronald Reagan and John Paul II proved that when they won the Cold War without the superpower showdown that had been feared for 40 years.
It wasn’t because Reagan didn’t use force — he did, on many occasions, and he built up the military as never before.
But he also used the power of moral truth, just as the pope did, to move the peoples of Eastern Europe, and ultimately those of the USSR itself, to throw off tyranny.
More than the Catholic vote in the midterm elections is at stake.
Republicans will be crushed if they lose it, to be sure — and both religious liberty and the right to life will suffer as a result, something Leo can hardly be complacent about.
But there will also be global repercussions from the president and pope condemning one another, when their voices together can achieve so much good for a world assailed by a cacophony of evil.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.
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