A Blasphemous President

Donald Trump’s recent outbursts at the pope—“WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” he said in one of his Truth Social posts—have renewed questions from observers about the president’s cognitive fitness and his apparently limitless capacity for blasphemy. His attacks also echoed old-fashioned fears about the Vatican as an insidious rival to American power. But more than anything, Trump’s post betrayed a gross and fundamental misunderstanding of who the pope is and what Catholics believe he is empowered to do.

The proximate cause of Trump’s ire was apparently a Saturday peace vigil the pope hosted at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, during which Leo—the first pope born in the United States—prayed for a kingdom of “dignity, understanding, and forgiveness,” to serve as “a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive.” Although the pope did not mention Trump by name, his reference to delusions of omnipotence could be seen as a clear rebuke of the president’s hubris in launching war with no real explanation to the public and no clear end in sight.

Trump’s fury was predictable, but his assumption that Leo was merely offering political commentary revealed a lack of regard for Christian fundamentals. Pretensions to omnipotence that rival God’s unlimited powers underlie the faith’s narratives about sin: Satan fell from grace after trying to usurp God’s throne for himself; Adam and Eve conspired to steal divine wisdom reserved only for God. When Leo advised the faithful—in statements that were addressed to everyone, not just to the Trump administration—to reject the mistaken impression that they can assert boundless control over the world, he was advocating for spiritual humility, a foundational element of Christianity.

[Francis X. Rocca: The Iran war showed a new side of Pope Leo]

Perhaps no quality is more alien to Trump than humility, spiritual or otherwise. Trump reinforced this point by following his tirade against the pope with a Truth Social post containing an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, dressed in flowing robes and illuminated by a heavenly glow, ministering to a sick, bedridden man against a backdrop of soldiers and an American flag. Seemingly created to challenge the pope, this image handily insulted not just Catholics but Christians more broadly: Irreverently depicting oneself as Jesus is a fairly clear-cut instance of profaning the sacred. Even Trump’s religious backers have rushed to declare their sense of betrayal. Douglas Wilson, the Calvinist pastor who counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among his followers, promptly called the image “blasphemy.”

The most generous reading of Trump’s decision to post the image is not that he intentionally dreamed up a fresh heresy, but that he acted without actually thinking about Christianity and its tenets whatsoever—despite the fact that Republicans have spent decades building political alliances with conservative Christians. Likewise, when Trump inveighed against the pope, he probably did not consider what this might mean for Catholics, including those who have doggedly supported him—such as Vice President Vance, who will soon release a book about his own Catholic faith. Trump has managed to alienate many of the Christians who brought him to power by revealing the limits of his understanding, not just of Catholicism but of Christian theology writ large. (Perhaps chastened by this response, the president quickly deleted the image and insisted he thought it depicted him as a doctor.)

Catholics believe we are governed by a hierarchy that takes its mandate directly from the word of God. The pope’s role is not to impose his personal will upon the masses, but to teach the faithful how to follow Jesus in their own life. Apostolic succession—the idea that the witness of the 12 apostles has been passed down by bishops in an unbroken chain, linking today’s Catholic leaders with the original leaders of the Church—is a core Catholic doctrine, and it directly links the pope back to those who knew Jesus personally and carried on his teachings. Trump may jealously lash out at any authority that rivals his own, but for Catholics the pope is not a king but a servant—the servus servorum Dei, or servant of the servants of God.

Teaching the faithful is an element of that service. Biblical texts supply principles for leading good lives and making good decisions, but those lessons are often abstract, and life presents innumerable situations in which the proper Christian choice is not clear. Part of the Church’s role is to help Christians understand how the dictates of the faith translate into concrete ethical matters, and politics is merely a branch of applied ethics. Therefore the pope is not only entitled to comment on political matters but obligated to, and indeed popes always have. Pope Leo XIII, who served at the turn of the 20th century and whose pontifical name inspired that of the current pope, famously wrote the encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed industrialization by rejecting unbridled capitalism and defending the needs of workers. In 2003, Pope John Paul II condemned the Iraq War as a “defeat for humanity.” Pope Leo XIV’s remarks follow in that tradition.

[Read: The parable of the president]

Trump probably could not predict just how profoundly insulting his posts were to the Christian faithful and Catholics in particular, but the leaders of the Catholic Church in America, including those who have loyally supported Trump, instantly saw that the president had crossed a line. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement saying that he was “disheartened that the President chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father” and defending the pope as “the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.” Bishop Robert Barron, a longtime supporter who smiled indulgently at a White House Easter gathering when Trump’s spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain, favorably compared the president to Jesus, likewise condemned Trump’s outburst as “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful,” adding, “It is the Pope’s prerogative to articulate Catholic doctrine and the principles that govern the moral life.”

Pope Leo, for his part, responded to Trump’s tirade with composure. He told reporters aboard the papal plane yesterday that he does not fear the Trump administration and will not “shy away from announcing the message of the Gospel,” then invited all people to look “for ways to avoid war any time that’s possible.” He added that speaking out about the message of the Gospel “is what the Church works for.” This, he implied, is a battle that Trump won’t win.

Trump, accustomed to playing the bully to forge deals, is perhaps discovering that his tactics make little sense against a power that has little need for currying favor. The Vatican is a 2,000-year-old global institution with a divine remit. The 250-year-old United States is still only a footnote, and this president’s term is barely a thought.