US President Donald Trump has openly criticized Pope Leo XIV, head of the Catholic Church, for his role in the US-Iran conflict and his handling of wartime foreign affairs.
He strongly expressed his disappointment with Pope Leo XIV on Sunday evening, condemning his stance on the Iran war and saying he is “terrible for foreign policy.”
“We don’t like a Pope who says it’s OK to have nuclear weapons… He’s a guy who doesn’t think we should mess with a country that wants nuclear weapons so they can blow up the world,” Trump told reporters. “I am not a fan of Pope Leo,” he said.
Leo, the first American Pope, has become increasingly vocal about America and Israel’s war with Iran, calling Trump’s rhetoric and threats against the people of Iran last week “truly unacceptable.”
Trump’s comments to reporters at Joint Base Andrews came shortly after he posted a lengthy criticism of the pope on Truth Social.
“Pope Leo is ‘weak’ on crime and ‘terrible’ on foreign policy,” Trump wrote. He further said that he does not want a Pope who thinks it is OK for Iran to have nuclear weapons or who thinks it is “terrible that the United States attacked Venezuela.”
He added, “And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States.”
The US President claimed that Leo “was not on any list to be Pope and the Church put him in place only because he was an American, and they thought it would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump.”
Notably, Trump’s latest comments came after the Pope said, ‘Enough of war,’ and condemned the ‘illusion of omnipotence’ in a peace prayer.
Although Pope Leo’s comments did not directly mention the war in Iran, they are read as his strongest condemnation of the conflict yet.
