A sharp public rift between the first American-born head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV, and the Trump administration has deepened this week, centered on the controversial use of religious rhetoric to justify the seven-week US-Israeli war on Iran. The escalating war of words reached a new peak on Thursday, when Pope Leo issued his most direct rebuke to date of leaders who twist sacred scripture to advance military and political ambitions.
In a post on the social platform X, the Pope repeated a pointed line from a recent address he delivered during a visit to Cameroon: “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.” He expanded on this condemnation in his original speech, adding that the globe is currently being exploited by a small group of authoritarian actors who put their own interests above global peace.
Coinciding nearly exactly with the Pope’s post, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth made his own religious reference during a press briefing in Washington D.C. Hegseth, who has repeatedly framed the war against Iran as a divine mission for the United States in regular Pentagon press briefings, compared journalists covering the conflict to Pharisees — the biblical figures Christians believe witnessed Jesus’ miracles but rejected his teachings. His analogy implied reporters were refusing to acknowledge what he framed as miraculous US military achievements in the war, which official counts confirm have killed more than 3,000 Iranian civilians and combatants to date.
This framing of the war as a religious cause has been a particular point of friction with Pope Leo, a longstanding public advocate for global peace and diplomatic conflict resolution. While the Pope’s anti-war stance aligns with longstanding Vatican policy, it has put him in direct conflict with President Donald Trump, who has launched a series of public attacks against the American pontiff for contradicting what he frames as core US interests.
The feud has stretched on for nearly a week, with Trump attempting to fracture the Pope’s public standing by highlighting the pontiff’s brother, Louis Prevost, who is an open supporter of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. Speaking to reporters Thursday, Trump sought to downplay the intensity of the dispute, claiming “I’m not fighting with him. I have nothing against the Pope. His brother is Maga all the way.” Trump also falsely claimed that Pope Leo supports Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, a claim the Pope has never publicly made, as he has declined to weigh in on US allegations of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Earlier in the week, the conflict sparked widespread controversy after Trump shared an AI-generated image that depicted him as Jesus Christ, healing a sick man in a hospital bed. After widespread public backlash, Trump removed the post, later claiming he had believed the image showed him as a doctor associated with the Red Cross, telling reporters “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.” Observers widely rejected the explanation, noting the image clearly showed Trump in a holy robe with glowing, miraculous hands positioned over the patient.
The public attack on the Pope came immediately before that controversial post, with Trump launching a tirade against Pope Leo on social media that criticized his positions on crime and foreign policy. The former president also brought up COVID-era restrictions on religious gatherings, writing “He talks about ‘fear’ of the Trump Administration, but doesn’t mention the FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart. I like his brother Louis much better than I like him. I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States.”
This is not the first time Pope Leo has broken with the Trump administration: he has already publicly condemned Israel’s ongoing war in Lebanon and Trump’s hardline crackdown on undocumented immigrants inside the United States. The broader Catholic Church hierarchy has largely stood behind Pope Leo, creating new religious divisions between American Catholics and the Evangelical Christian community that forms one of Trump’s core political support bases.
Multiple senior Catholic cardinals spoke out against the administration’s war agenda in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that aired Sunday. Just one day earlier, Washington D.C.’s archbishop Cardinal Robert McElroy delivered an uncommonly direct political rebuke during a public peace mass, calling on Christian believers to move past passive prayer and actively advocate for an end to the conflict. “As citizens and believers in this democracy that we cherish so deeply, we must advocate for peace with our representatives and leaders. It is not enough to say we have prayed. We must also act… our president will move to re-enter this immoral war,” McElroy said. “No. Not in our name. Not at this moment. Not with our country.”