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Pope Leo said Monday that he plans to continue speaking out against war after U.S. President Donald Trump’s direct attack the previous day on the leader of the 1.4-billion-member church.
Trump said Sunday the U.S.-born pope should “stop catering to the Radical Left.”
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” the president wrote on social media.
In comments aboard the papal flight to Algiers, where the first U.S. pope is starting a 10-day tour to four African countries, the pontiff also said the Christian message was being “abused.”
“I don’t want to get into a debate with him,” Leo told Reuters as he greeted journalists on the plane. “I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing.
“I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems,” he said, speaking in English.
“The message of the church, my message, the message of the Gospel: Blessed are the peacemakers. I do not look at my role as being political, a politician.”
Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pope, celebrated his inaugural Easter Mass as pontiff on Sunday with a call to lay down arms and seek peace to global conflicts through dialogue.
Remarkable criticism
Leo, originally from Chicago, has emerged as an outspoken critic of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in recent weeks and decried the “madness of war” on in a peace appeal on Saturday.
In a speech on Palm Sunday last month in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, the Pope said God rejects the prayers of leaders who start wars and have their “hands full of blood,” calling the conflict in Iran “atrocious.”
Trump, in a scrum with reporters after Air Force One landed outside Washington after returning from Florida, said of Leo, “We don’t like a pope who says it’s OK to have a nuclear weapon.”
“I’m not a fan of Pope Leo,” he added.
Massimo Faggioli, an expert on the papacy, compared the comments to efforts by the leaders of Germany and Italy during World War Two to draw Pope Pius XII to support their causes.
“Not even Hitler or Mussolini attacked the pope so directly and publicly,” Faggioli told Reuters.
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was disheartened by Trump’s comments.
“Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls,” Coakley said in a statement.
Leo last year said he supported a unique public statement by the conference of bishops, one that criticized the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies.
“Someone who says, ‘I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States’, I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” the pontiff said in September.
Trump’s criticism comes days after a report emerged that Pentagon officials had criticized the Vatican while hosting the church’s representative to the U.S. in a January meeting. The Pentagon and the Vatican pushed back on the report.
Trump, in contrast to past presidents such as Joe Biden and George W. Bush, does not regularly attend church services. He said in 2020 that he considers himself a “non-denominational Christian” after being raised Presbyterian.
Trump clashed with Pope Francis, Leo’s predecessor, during his first presidential campaign in 2016.
Amid Trump’s promises to build a wall along the border with Mexico, Francis said, “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
Trump said it was “disgraceful” for a religious leader to question a person’s faith.
Two of Trump’s current cabinet members have been sued by a nonprofit group for holding regular Christian worship services.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State said in its suit that the taxpayer-funded services held by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Labour Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer are “abusing the power of their government positions and taxpayer-funded resources to impose their preferred religion,” which the nonprofit group described as having a “Christian Nationalist agenda.”
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