Trump attacks Pope Leo over war criticism, immigration, and foreign policy

Donald Trump’s attack on Pope Leo XIV turned a dispute over war into a broader fight about immigration, foreign policy and who speaks for American Catholics. Trump blasted Leo as “weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy,” then widened the criticism to the pope’s objections to his Iran policy and his views on immigration, a striking confrontation between a sitting U.S. president and the first pope born in the United States.

Leo responded with a message that was both pastoral and pointed. In remarks aboard the papal plane on April 13, he said he would keep speaking out against war, adding, “I don't have fear” of Trump. He said he did not want to get into a debate with the president and argued that the Gospel message was being abused. Leo also said too many innocent people were being killed and that someone had to stand up and say there was a better way.

The clash intensified after Leo’s latest criticism of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and his public push for peace. On April 10, he wrote on X, “God does not bless any conflict,” warning that military force would not bring peace or freedom. He had also called Trump’s earlier threat to destroy Iranian civilization “truly unacceptable,” underscoring how forcefully the Vatican has pushed back on the president’s language and approach.

The Vatican has paired those remarks with a visible appeal for restraint. At a prayer vigil for peace in St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Peter’s Square on April 11, about 10,000 faithful gathered as the pope urged leaders to choose dialogue and mediation instead of rearmament and death. The message put moral language at the center of a geopolitical argument that now stretches from Tehran to Washington.

Trump’s response went beyond the Iran war. CBS News reported that he also attacked Leo over immigration, said he did not want a pope who criticized the president of the United States, and claimed Leo had been elected partly because he was American. That political framing matters because it puts the pope in the middle of the partisan fights that shape the U.S. election cycle, especially for Catholic voters who have been split over Trump’s hard line on borders, war and executive power.

Leo’s stance carries added weight because he became the first American pope on May 8, 2025, and is now traveling to Algiers at the start of a 10-day trip to four African countries. As he takes the Vatican’s message abroad, the dispute at home has become a test of whether papal authority can still shape the moral vocabulary of American politics.