Trump feud with Pope Leo XIV intensifies as Catholics push back

Pope Leo XIV’s clash with Donald Trump has become a larger fight over who gets to claim moral authority on the American right. After Leo, the first American pope, criticized the Trump administration’s posture on the war in Iran and called for peace, Trump struck back on Truth Social on April 12, saying he did not want a pope who criticized the president and accusing Leo of being “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.”

U.S. Catholic leaders pushed back quickly. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was “disheartened” by Trump’s remarks and added that “Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the Pope a politician.” The bishops also pointed to the Catholic just-war tradition, signaling that the dispute was not only about personality but about competing claims to define the ethics of war, peace and public life.

The Vatican defended Leo on the same ground. Church officials said he sees his role as speaking for the Gospel rather than as a politician, and Leo himself said he would continue speaking strongly against war while urging peace, dialogue and a return to negotiations. That position placed the pontiff squarely against Trump’s hard-edged political style and underscored the broader tension between religious authority and nationalist politics.

The fight then spread into conservative media, where Sean Hannity defended Trump and attacked Leo over the pope’s peace plea. Tucker Carlson responded by attacking Hannity, turning the dispute into a fresh rupture inside the MAGA media ecosystem. Trump’s own suggestion that MAGA figures could be sorted into “good, bad, and somewhere in the middle” added to the sense that the conflict was becoming an internal test of loyalty as much as a clash with the Catholic Church.

Catholic and political observers warned that the feud could hurt Republicans with Catholic swing voters, especially as debate over the Trump administration’s Iran war policy grows sharper. What began as a presidential insult to the pope has exposed a deeper struggle over nationalism, religious identity and which institution on the right can still speak with the most authority.