There is a war going on right now for the soul of the world that is straight out of the Bible – and I’m not just talking about the Middle East.
In one corner are President Trump and his allies, who insist that everything they do is divinely mandated. They have consistently invoked a violent version of God as they deport undocumented immigrants, try to whiten the United States, tear up long-standing treaties with allies, bomb alleged narco boats like a biblical plague and strangle nations they deem a threat or whose resources they covet.
They are the ones who lecture religious leaders on the principles of Jesus, demanding blessings for Trump’s actions – otherwise.
just check Recent allegations in The Free Press Senior defense officials berated the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States in January over Pope Leo XIV’s lack of enthusiasm for Trump’s imperialist ambitions. Or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has tattoos praising the bloodthirst of the Crusades (another Middle Eastern war that the “civilized” side lost), who compared the rescue of a downed American aviator in Iran over Easter weekend to the resurrection of Jesus.
It is a playbook straight out of the Book of Revelation, which describes a beast in the end times “with a mouth speaking great words and blasphemies” seeking to establish dominion over the earth.
In the other corner of this existential battle is a real man of God: Pope Leo XIV.
Instead of cowering before a dictator like St. Francis, the Pharaoh in the Old Testament, the first American Pope has defied Trump like a protester at a “No Kings” rally. He has yet to condemn anyone in the president’s hateful circle by name – but Pope Leo has returned to his actions repeatedly in his first year as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
He began his papacy by greeting a cheering crowd with “Peace be with you all” – what Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection and a brilliant, biblical way of conveying where he stands in our wartime times.
A few weeks earlier on Palm Sunday, the Pope had declared during Mass in St. Peter’s Square that God “does not hear the prayers of those who wage war”—a not-so-subtle rebuke to Hegseth, who had prayed for “every round to find (its mark)” and for “the tremendous violence of action against those who do not deserve mercy” shortly after the U.S. launched the Iran war.
For his first Easter message, Pope Leo wrote, “Let those who have the power to wage war choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through negotiation!”
Meanwhile, President Trump told a reporter that God supports the destruction he is wreaking on Iran because “God is good. God wants people to be taken care of.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks to reporters at the Pentagon in Washington on July 16, 2025.
(Julia Demery Nikhinson/Associated Press)
According to a Free Press article, the Vatican declined Vice President J.D. Vance’s invitation for Pope Leo to visit the US because they feared Trump would use him as a political pawn. Instead, the man born Robert Prevost in Chicago plans to spend July 4 — America’s 250th birthday — on a Mediterranean island that has long served as a gateway for migrants trying to reach Europe.
Critics will accuse Pope Leo of Trump derangement syndrome and call him particularly short-sighted, as he stands contrary to the wishes of many American Catholics.
Although he is not Catholic, Trump has championed Catholicism far above any other main Christian denomination, from acknowledging feast days to packing his administration and the Supreme Court with followers in a way that even Joe Biden – a lifelong Catholic – never did.
According to the Pew Research Center, about 55% of Catholics vote for Trump in 2024. A survey last year by Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America found “a clear generational shift away from liberal self-identification” among young priests. Dioceses across the country are reporting the highest number of conversions in decades, many of them drawn by conservative Catholic influencers.
But Trump’s embrace of Catholicism, like everything else in his life, is based on allegiance to it. His administration pulled millions of federal funds from Catholic charities because they assisted immigrants regardless of legal status – something the American Catholic Church has done for more than a century. Vance, himself a Catholic convert, accused the bishops of being “concerned about their bottom line” for daring to criticize the move and the deportation of his boss Leviathan.
The Free Press also reported that Trump’s supporters invoked the Avignon Papacy — when 14th-century French kings exiled a succession of popes from the Vatican and turned them into their puppets while bullying the Vatican ambassador.
Reclaiming history is an obsession of the Trump regime, so bringing up the medieval episode is like threatening Leo into shape – otherwise.
This is what makes Pope Leo’s stance against modern Babylon all the more courageous. The main role of a Pope is to bear witness to the words of Jesus Christ, who said much more about caring for the humble and turning the other cheek than about waging war.
The best Popes, from John XXIII to John Paul II, know that their words stand as a challenge to all people, whether believers or not, to build a better world that paves the way for the world to come. Trump started a war for himself; Pope Leo urges us to stand up for something other than ourselves.
At this point in his reign, Trump is a dead ringer for the Antichrist, described in the Second Book of Thessalonians as “the man of sin…the son of perdition who resists and sets himself above all.”
Of course, Pope Leo would never characterize his opposition to Trump in such apocalyptic terms. But his stance against presidential tyranny is a call to action similar to John Paul II’s call for the free world to oppose the Soviet empire.
Pope Leo said on Easter, “Let us renounce every desire for conflict, dominance and power and pray to the Lord to grant His peace to a world devastated by wars and full of hatred and indifference that makes us feel powerless in the face of evil.”
Amen, amen, amen.
