POTUS versus the pontiff
National Post, 16 April 2026
'I am not a fan of Pope Leo,' Trump said. No doubt the feeling is mutual
“I am not a fan of Pope Leo,” U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday.
Right back at you, Mr. President.
Pope Leo XIV did not say that. He didn’t have to, given that Trump is by far the most unpopular democratic leader on the planet. Trump carries a minority of Americans at home, and precious few anywhere abroad.
“I have no fear of the Trump administration,” is what the Holy Father did say. Why would he? Increasing numbers of observers wonder if the president is not only unhinged, but perhaps not well.
At a Saturday prayer vigil for peace in Rome, Pope Leo lamented that “even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death.”
A man less narcissistic than Trump would have applied those words to the monstrous regime in Iran, which has invoked God’s name to advance terror and tyranny for nearly 50 years. But Trump took it personally, and vomited forth an attack on Pope Leo that astounded even his most sycophantic supporters.
To ensure that no Christian was left behind in being insulted, the president then posted a blasphemous image of himself as, well, Himself. He took it down later, claiming that he thought it depicted him as a doctor. It is possible that Trump’s knowledge of art history does not include the rudiments of sacred iconography.
Back to Saturday, a full evening for both the Vatican and the Trump administration. While Pope Leo was praying at St. Peter’s, Vice-President JD Vance was negotiating with the Iranians. Vance had two goals.
Having had its nuclear weapons program “obliterated” last year by Israeli and American strikes — Trump’s word — Vance now wanted Iran to give up its nuclear program. Otherwise what? Would it be “obliterated” again?
The second goal was to open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran last attempted to close in 1987. The original “peace through strength” president, Ronald Reagan, tidily attended to that, and for nearly 40 years passage through the strait has been serene. Only after the masterstroke of the Netanyahu-Trump war has it been blocked, and de facto annexed, with Iranian tolls being levied.
If you are going to beg a theocratic self-styled Muslim regime to cede the advantages your own war has granted it — don’t forget the lifting of American sanctions on Iranian oil — then you might as well abase yourself in Islamabad. As the Iranian despots landed in the “City of Islam” they likely expected to have an easier time than Russian President Vladimir Putin has with whatever appeasers the Trump administration sends to meet him.
In the event, Iran refused to unblock Hormuz, so now Trump has blockaded it entirely. Applying his tariff policy to matters of war, Trump is now effectively raising the cost of living for Americans — and Britons and Bangladeshis — on the logic that he is raising the cost of living for Iranians more.
On Saturday night in Islamabad, Vance did not have the able assistance of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the most important diplomatic negotiations of Trump’s second term. Rubio was with Trump watching a cage match in Miami.
Leo in prayer in Rome. Vance supplicating in Islamabad. Trump and Rubio at a UFC fight. Who was fulfilling his mission on Saturday night? Who looked simply absurd, in a tragic rather than comic way?
Pope Leo — along with most of America’s customary allies — does not believe that the Israeli-American war on Iran is either just or wise. It is not that force can never be used legitimately, but rather that a just war needs to prudently deploy measures reasonably expected to preserve or restore peace — what St. Augustine called the “tranquillity of order.” Order sometimes needs to be enforced.
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