WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV on social media on Sunday, saying the first American pope should “stop catering to the Radical Left.”
It was an extraordinary broadside against the global leader of the Catholic Church, exacerbating a feud that began over the war in Iran.
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” the president wrote on social media. He also wrote that “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”
A short time later, speaking to reporters after Air Force One landed outside Washington from Florida, Trump said, “We don’t like a pope who says it’s OK to have a nuclear weapon.”
“He’s a very liberal person,” Trump said of Leo, before adding, “I’m not a fan of Pope Leo.”
Trump’s post followed Leo having denounced over the weekend the “delusion of omnipotence” that is fueling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran and demanded political leaders stop and negotiate peace.
Leo presided over an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica on the same day the United States and Iran began face-to-face negotiations in Pakistan during a fragile ceasefire.
The U.S.-born pope didn’t mention the United States or Trump by name in his prayer. But Leo’s tone and message appeared directed at Trump and U.S. officials, who have boasted of U.S. military superiority and justified the war in religious terms.
Leo is scheduled to leave Monday for an 11-day trip to Africa.
