The President and the Pope: An Unprecedented Rift

Last updated on: April 15, 2026 at 7:39 am by Barbara O'Brien

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The President and the Pope: An Unprecedented Rift 2026-04-15T07:39:35-05:00 Barbara O'Brien

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U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed open hostility to Pope Leo XIV. Trump was angered by the Pope’s criticism of his bombing of Iran. You can read the complete Truth Social Post here. When asked to apologize to Pope Leo, Trump refused. The pontiff’s response was far more measured and subdued. “I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do,” His Holiness said. But has a pope ever felt the need to say he’s not afraid of a U.S. president? Not that I can find.

Much of the President’s rant against the Pope is nonsensical. It begins “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” Popes are not involved with temporal criminal justice; they don’t deal with “crime” one way or another. Trump also wrote, “Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” And then Trump called on Leo to “get his act together.” By all accounts the 2025 Conclave elected the Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost because he seemed most ready to continue the path of the late Pope Francis.

Mr. Trump also was critical of Pope Francis, although this was before he was elected president. While Trump was running to be elected president in 2016, Pope Francis — head of the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 — criticized Trump’s plan to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. “Anyone, whoever he is, who only wants to build walls and not bridges is not a Christian,” the pontiff told journalists after a trip to Mexico. Trump called the comment “disgraceful” He also said Mexico was using the elderly pope “as a pawn.” This rift blew over relatively quickly, however, possibly because Trump was not yet the president.

Presidents and Popes: A Short History

Popes have criticized U.S. presidents before. Pope John Paul II — head of the Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005 — was openly opposed to President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which began in March 2003. In February 2003 the pontiff even sent a Cardinal with a personal letter to the White House, hoping to persuade Bush not to invade. In 2004 he criticized President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq while President Bush was standing beside him. The President had visited the 84-year-old Pope in the Vatican while in Italy for a World War II commemoration. After a private meeting, the two men stood together in front of reporters. “With President Bush at his side, Pope John Paul II on Friday reiterated his unhappiness over the invasion of Iraq and urged the president to speed the restoration of sovereignty to the Iraqi people,” the New York Times reported. Whatever President Bush might have thought privately, in public he was entirely respectful and deferential to Pope John Paul II. Although the meeting didn’t noticeably change Bush’s policies toward Iraq.

The very first meeting between an incumbent U.S. president and a pope occurred at the Vatican on January 4, 1919. World War I had ended, and President Woodrow Wilson visited Rome, and Pope Benedict XV, before going on to the peace talks in Versailles. It was a cordial meeting, although the Presbyterian Wilson seemed uncomfortable with receiving a papal blessing according to this account. There would not be another such meeting until President Dwight Eisenhower met with Pope John XXIII in 1959.

Of course the Vatican meeting between President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, and Pope Paul VI in July 1963 seemed especially significant. Pope Paul VI’s papacy had just begun, in June 1963. As the meeting concluded the President did not kneel to the Pope and kiss the papal ring, as a Catholic would be expected to do, which generated much discussion in media. Kennedy was expecting to run for re-election in 1964 and probably though bowing to the Pope would trigger too much anti-Catholic hysteria. It’s reported that JFK remarked to an aide that shaking the Pope’s hand instead of kneeling might earn him some votes in South Carolina. President Kennedy would be assassinated in November 1963.

Every president since John Kennedy has met with a pope, although not always in the Vatican. Pope Paul VI visited the United States in 1965 — the first ever papal visit to the U.S. — and President Lyndon Johnson met the Pope at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Pope John Paul II visited the U.S. in 1979 and was welcomed to the White House by President Jimmy Carter. In 1984 Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan crossed paths at the Fairbanks International Airport in Alaska. The well-traveled Pope John Paul II also met with Bill Clinton in Denver, CO (1993); Newark, NJ (1995); and St. Louis, MO (1999), as well as the Vatican in 1994.

Presidents and Popes: What’s next?

Presidents and popes have not always seen eye-t0-eye on every issue. But it has to be said that no sensible American politician would openly insult the Pope. In recent decades the percentage of the U.S. population that identifies as Catholic has fluctuated between 20 and 24 percent. That’s a lot of voters. This is especially true when polls are showing the Pope is a great deal more popular than the President. And any sensible adult ought to be able to respect that a pope has a unique role to play in the world. Yet U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic, is now warning Pope Leo XIV to “stay in his lane.” “I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on with the Catholic church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy,” Vance said.

I believe Pope Leo XIV considers matters of war and peace and the humane treatment of migrants to be very much in his lane.

Shortly after posting his Truth Social rant slandering Pope Leo XIV, President Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus healing the sick. Even many of his own supporters were appalled. This speaks to a lack of judgment in the President that should alarm us.

Pope Leo XIV during an audience with the media (May 12, 2025). Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

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About Barbara O'Brien

Barbara is the author of The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World (Shambhala, 2019). You can read more about the author here.

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