DONALD J. TRUMP BECOMES THE FIRST U.S. PRESIDENT TO PUBLICLY CRITICIZE A REIGNING PONTIFF

DONALD J. TRUMP BECOMES THE
FIRST U.S. PRESIDENT TO PUBLICLY
CRITICIZE A REIGNING PONTIFF

Last night, April 12th, Donald J. Trump became the first President in the 250 history of the United States to publicly criticize a reigning Roman Pontiff.

In a posting on Truth Social at 9:03 pm, President Trump said “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”

He went on to say that “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela… And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do..”

President Trump then made the extraordinary claim that he was responsible for Pope Leo’s election.

“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,” said Trump.

The President then admonished the Pope, asserting “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”

In a tarmac interview with reporters an hour later, President Trump reiterated his criticism of Leo: “I do not think he’s doing a very good job…We don’t like a Pope who says it is ok to have a nuclear weapon…I am not a big fan of Pope Leo. He is a very liberal person…He’s a man that doesn’t think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world.”

The President’s remarks came just five days after Pope Leo XIV took the unprecedented step of directly criticizing the remarks of an American President.

On April 7, 2026, President Trump, referring to Iran, wrote on Truth Social “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

In a response, that same day, Pope Leo stated: “Today as we all know there was this threat against all the people of Iran. This is truly unacceptable.”

The Pope went on to say “I would like to invite everyone to think in their hearts of so many innocents, so many children, so many elderly, totally innocent, who would also be victims of this escalation of a war that has already begun and, which from the first days, we said, ‘Let us return to dialogue, to negotiation, let us try to resolve these problems.'”

The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts said President Trump’s remarks were “further compelling evidence that the President not only lacks restraint, but that no one in his circle of aides, advisers and cabinet secretaries even understands or ever counsels restraint.”

Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comments: “As Vicar of Christ and Successor of Saint Peter, Pope Leo XIV would have been derelict in the performance of his duties had he not condemned the threat of genocide and culturcide against a nation of 93 million people.

Implicit in the President’s pronouncement was the threat to use nuclear weapons to effect the mass extermination of innocent civilians.

Such an act would have been a war crime, a crime against humanity, a murderous repudiation of Christian just war ethics, a violation of U.S. Law (18 U.S.C. 1091) and a gross violation of multiple treaties to which the United States is a signatory, including the Genocide Convention, the  three Hague Conventions and the four treaties comprising the Geneva Convention.

The Pope’s message was timely, measured, temperate, appropriate and entirely warranted. The President’s response was an angry mixture of ad hominem attacks, personal grievances and defiant bluster.

Donald Trump’s barbarous threat to erase Iranian civilization is unknown in the history of the American Presidency, and in the modern discourse of civilized nations.

It is a scandal that so few American Catholic political leaders have embraced and echoed the words of Pope Leo.”

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Editor’s Note: Others interpreted President’s Trump’s words as a threat to destroy the Iranian electric network as he had threatened, and that such an act would toss the Iran civilization into the stone age – hence, ‘destroy’ a civilization.