His ceasefire seemed shaky.
Israel was bombing Lebanon.
The Strait of Hormuz remained closed.
Oil prices had spiked – again.
And Iran was playing hardball at the negotiating table.
But US President Donald Trump had something else on his mind yesterday.
He’d been crossed.
By no less than the leader of the 1.4 billion-strong global Catholic Church.
An American Pope.
Pope Leo XIV had already labelled Mr Trump’s “a whole civilisation will die tonight” statement “truly unacceptable”. The “daddy” of Christianity had called the US-Israel war against Iran a “delusion of omnipotence”.
“I’m not a fan of Pope Leo,” President Trump affirmed.
“I don’t think he’s doing a very good job. He likes crime, I guess,” adding, “He’s a very liberal person”.
But by Monday, President Trump’s wrath had truly boiled over.
The Pope had addressed a Sunday prayer vigil.
“Enough of the idolatry of self and money,” he proclaimed.
“Enough of the display of power. Enough of war.”
President Trump took this personally.
After all, he likes to present himself as the President of Peace. As the physical instrument of divine power.
So he took to social media and generative AI in anger.
And that sparked a spiritual supernova.
President Trump now insists he had no idea he was depicting himself in a Messianic-like pose. That’s despite the image following a composition highly familiar among evangelical Christians.
“I just heard about it, and I said, ‘How did they come up with that?’” he asserted overnight. “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better …
“Only the fake news could come up with that one.”
Can you?
Mr Trump portrays himself garbed in flowing white robes, not a blue or green doctor’s gown.
He has a red cowl draped over his shoulders, not a stethoscope.
His hands glow gold with magic potential in a faith-healing pose. Not with a vaccination needle or pill tab.
The US flag features prominently. As does Capitol Hill and the Statue of Liberty. And Mr Trump is surrounded by the worshipful faces of a soldier, a nurse, a farmer and a tradwife.
Things go a little awry on high.
The ghosts of slain US soldiers march onward through the heavens – led by a demonic winged and horned figure.
“I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with the Red Cross,” he said.
The distinctive Red Cross (Red Crescent) charity logo appears nowhere in the picture. Nor does the Rod of Asclepius (a Greek mythological winged snake wrapped around a staff) used as an international symbol of medicine.
President Trump also remains unrepentant about his attack on Pope Leo.
“There’s nothing to apologise for. He’s wrong!” the President insisted.
Of Church and State
President Trump enjoys an evangelical fanbase.
Former MAGA kingpin Steve Bannon proclaimed him to be “a vehicle of divine providence” and “an instrument of divine will”. Dozens of other high-profile religious and political figures have taken up this trumpet call.
It’s a medieval claim to power.
It states that if a great leader is chosen by a god, they are placed above human laws, limits, morals and standards.
It worked well for monarchs and tyrants throughout history. Right up until they inevitably clashed with actual religious leaders.
Such as Britain’s King Henry VIII. And France’s King Philip IV.
But President Trump claims a close personal affinity with the Dominionist Christian version of Jesus.
Televangelist Paula White-Cain, one of the President’s personal spiritual advisers, reinforced this vision over Easter: “You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Saviour showed us”.
And President Trump knows what he wants from religion.
“I don’t want a Pope who criticises the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do,” Mr Trump insists.
He won by a popular vote margin of 1.5 per cent.
Pope Leo XIV was born in the United States midwest. But he spent much of his life as a missionary in Peru.
He immediately set about redefining the Vatican’s position on global affairs following his surprise election in May last year.
He has denounced the use of religion in identity politics. He sympathised with the plight of refugees. He criticised those calling themselves “pro-life” while advocating for the death penalty and opposing humanitarian aid programs.
He insisted conscience must overrule power, not the other way around.
Then, in November, he told 15,000 Catholic youth in Indianapolis to “be careful not to use political categories to speak about faith … the church doesn’t belong to any political party”.
None of this went down well with the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. Nor the Trump administration.
Pope Leo’s words matter. He speaks from the same tradition they do. With authority.
And he advocates for peace through mercy. Not strength.
“I have no fear of either the Trump administration or speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel,” he said yesterday.
“The message of the Gospel is very clear: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’.”
Knights of the Cross
“Pope Leo said things that are wrong. He was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran, and you cannot have a nuclear Iran,” Mr Trump declared.
He spoke to reporters while taking a DoorDash delivery from McDonald’s at the White House overnight.
“Pope Leo would not be happy with the end result. You’d have hundreds of millions of people dead. And it’s not going to happen,” he insisted.
The 47th President of the United States has proclaimed a long list of grievances against the man who sits on the Throne of Peter.
“I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Mr Trump wrote on April 12.
That doesn’t mesh well with Pope Leo’s own words.
“Lord, enlighten the leaders of the nations, so they may have the courage to abandon projects of death,” he prayed in a March 5 video message.
“May the nuclear threat never again dictate the future of humanity.”
President Trump has implied Pope Leo should thank him for the top Catholic job: “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican”.
But Leo XIV was elected by a secret conclave of 133 members of the global College of Cardinals. Not appointed.
Mr Trump accused Leo of being “a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime”.
The Vatican has its own criminal and legal codes. But it also has the Ten Commandments (the Decalogue) as its fundamental principles of morality.
Several of which are relevant here.
Number one states: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”.
Number two states: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above”.
And the Christian Gospel of John, at 13:34, quotes Jesus Christ as saying: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another”.
Finally, President Trump lays down his expectation of a Pope’s place in the world: “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”.
Pope Leo agrees.
“To put my message on the same plane as what the president has attempted to do here, I think, is not understanding what the message of the Gospel is,” he told reporters on his way to Africa.
“We are not politicians. We do not look at foreign policy from the same perspective that he may have.’’
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer
