Trump’s social media attacks have put Leo XIV in the U.S. presidential mix

President Donald Trump has succeeded in doing what he is best at: Making the story about him – but that may not be the only effect of his social media tirade targeting Pope Leo XIV.

“That’s not the way you do it,” is how Crux Now’s editor-in-chief put it to the BBC about Trump’s social media screed attacking the pope on the eve of the pontiff’s departure for Africa.

Around the web-world, responses to the since-deleted AI slop Trump shared of himself refigured as Jesus the Healer ran the gamut, from prosaic “blasphemy,” to “deranged” and a good bit of language stronger than that.

Trump even managed to draw criticism from Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, who is something of a media guru to the U.S. bishops and has come in for a hard time over his coziness with the Trump administration.

Barron serves as a member of Trump’s religious liberty commission and has been among the more conciliatory U.S. prelates in the face of Trump’s controversial policies and online antics.

“I think the President owes the Pope an apology,” Barron said on Monday, at the conclusion of a statement he shared to X (formerly Twitter), in which he articulated his reasons for seeing things the way he does and offered some thoughts about a way forward.

“The statements made by President Trump on Truth Social regarding the Pope were entirely inappropriate and disrespectful,” Barron said.

“They don’t contribute at all to a constructive conversation,” Barron continued, noting also the pope’s “prerogative to articulate Catholic doctrine and the principles that govern the moral life.”

On that point, there is broad agreement across the spectrum of opinion in the Church and in U.S. society, even among Catholics who are polarized as the rest of the public.

Regarding the concrete application of those principles, Barron said, “[P]eople of good will can and do disagree,” and he’s not wrong.

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Barron also expressed his gratitude to the president for the many ways his administration have “reached out to Catholics and other people of faith.”

“It has been a high honor to serve on the Religious Liberty Commission,” Barron said.

“No President in my lifetime has shown a greater dedication to defending our first liberty,” that is, religious liberty.

“I would warmly recommend that serious Catholics within the Trump administration,” Barron also suggested, naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance, and U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch, “might meet with Vatican officials so that a real dialogue can take place.”

“This is far preferable to statements on social media,” Barron said.

Implacable ideologues and incorrigible rage-addicts may not like it, but those last lines were arguably the most “Leonine” of Barron’s statement.

Pope Leo XIV on Monday made it clear he is not afraid of Trump or his administration, and also made it clear he is not only open but desirous of dialogue and active in facilitating dialogue with a view to peace and goodwill.

“I do not look at my role as being political, a politician,” the pope said. “I don’t want to get into debate with [Trump,]” Leo continued, saying he does not “think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing.”

“The message of the Church, my message, the message of the Gospel: Blessed are the peacemakers,” the pontiff said.

“I will continue to speak out loudly against war,” Leo said, “looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the States to look for just solutions to problems.”

“Too many people are suffering in the world today,” he said, “too many innocent people are being killed, and I think someone has to stand up and say, ‘There’s a better way’.”

Those are words for a conversation.

In the meantime, while there is institutional cover for Rubio and Vance, there is a window for Vatican engagement with both of them.

Leo and his men in the Vatican could do worse than invite Rubio – who is still Secretary of State, after all – to one of the many conferences always going on in Rome through the various curia departments, pontifical universities, and Vatican think tanks.

Though it might take a little doing, Leo’s and Vance’s handlers could also work out a way for the vice president to have a “private” meeting with the pontiff on the sidelines of something-or-other and then let it be known that they enjoyed a “cordial colloquy” about Vance’s new book detailing his conversion to Catholicism.

The window, however, is not going to stay open much longer.

Vance and Rubio are both positioning themselves for the 2028 presidential election, and they are both widely considered the most viable contenders for the Republican nomination.

Vance has an elected office he cannot easily leave, but therefore also more leeway to distance himself from the administration while he is in office because – not to put too fine a point on it – Trump can’t fire him.

Trump has made it measurably more difficult, however, for both Rubio and Vance to support his administration and also court the Catholic vote, 55 percent of which Trump won in 2024. Among Mass-going Catholics, the percentage that went for Trump was higher.

These are political realities with which everyone must contend.

As of this writing, Rubio has not offered any public comment on the incident.

Keeping one’s head down and one’s mouth shut in such situations is almost invariably good politics, but the episode and its aftermath must influence the calculus Rubio is applying to his decision about if, when and how to depart the administration.

A Vatican invitation for Rubio while he is still Secretary of State could also influence that calculus, and it could be precisely the deft sort of “soft power” exercise that is increasingly becoming the hallmark of the new Leonine era.

Whether that would make Rubio’s departure more likely or less, is one question; whether it would break Rubio’s way is another.

Vance, meanwhile, has said he thinks his principal’s latest social media enormity is nothing to write home about.

“[W]hen they’re in conflict, they’re in conflict,” Vance said of the pope and the U.S. president earlier this week, in remarks during an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News.

“I don’t worry about it too much, Brett. “I think it’s a natural thing. I’m sure it’ll happen in the future, and it’s not that big of a deal that it happened in the past.”

That hints at another, broader problem in “the discourse” as we call it in the trade.

In the rest of his remarks to Baier, Vance basically tried to paint the entire war-of-words as a foreign policy spat, and one the pontiff started.

“I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic Church,” Vance said, “and let the President of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.”

Even if the whole episode is no more than a contretemps, that is an unlikely frame for it, and one that glosses very neatly over the character of Trump’s engagement.

Consensus opinion is that Trump’s behavior toward the pope and his principal, Jesus Christ, toward the Catholic faith and Catholics around the world, and toward Christians more broadly, was egregious even by the low standards he has set for himself.

There is no spinning that away, try as Vance or anyone else might, and noting that Trump does this sort of thing with some considerable regularity does not make it better.

Voters may well remember it, and opponents both within the Republican party and on the other side, when the time comes, will surely remind them of it.

Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri