The pope invokes the celebrated lesson from the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
The president invokes his lust for supremacy: “A whole civilization will die tonight.”
Whose side would you take?
The pope denounces war. The president inflames it.
On Saturday, Pope Leo posted a statement about what he sees in the Middle East: “God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
He didn’t even name Donald Trump. He didn’t have to.
And Trump didn’t have to respond, but he doesn’t know how not to: “I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States,” he wrote Sunday night in an overwrought screed on his website, “because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.”
But even that ego-driven non-sequitur wasn’t enough. Not for Trump. Never one to let tempers cool, he went personal on the first American pope: “He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”
If Trump wasn’t in the White House? If only.
But he is, and picking a fight with the leader of the Catholic Church and thus the leader of almost one-and-a-half billion Catholics around the world seems odd. Trump’s vice president JD Vance is Catholic. His secretary of state Marco Rubio is Catholic. Even his wife Melania is Catholic. In 2024 Trump won most of the Catholic vote. Is he so impulsive, and so incapable of containing his anger, that he’s willing to forsake some Catholic votes?
Apparently so, because just hours after his online spat with Pope Leo, he posted a blasphemous image of himself, wrapped in the aura of Jesus Christ.
This is a man who can’t read the room. He took arrows for this post from some of his own traditionally steadfast religious supporters. One of them, a Christian commentator named Megan Basham, wrote, “I don’t know if the President thought he was being funny or if he is under the influence of some substance or what possible explanation he could have for this OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy.”
Blasphemy. For all the sins Donald Trump has committed, that might be a new one.
Of course when confronted by reporters about the blasphemy, he lied through his teeth: “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.”
That’s a laugh. Take a look again at the image Trump posted. Does your doctor dress like that? Anderson Cooper said on CNN, “Doctors typically don’t dress like that, with celestial light, beaming down on them.”
Twelve hours after the image went viral, the White House deleted it.
But he can’t delete the impression it made. We don’t know whether Trump thought it was clever or whether he thought it would earn some political points or whether he really believes he is the resurrection and the light himself. But whatever the reason, someone I know summarized it perfectly: “He’s really sick.”
Pope Leo preaches peace at every opportunity. That’s a far cry from Trump. He preaches war. His closing argument yesterday was, “I’m not a fan of Pope Leo. Leo’s was, “I have no fear of the Trump administration.”
In the bigger scheme of things, where thousands have died in the Middle East and the global economy has been hurt by Donald Trump’s war of choice, his spat with the pope and his blasphemy online aren’t major stories. But they do matter because they show us what kind of man we’re dealing with in the president. Egotistical, delusional, and dishonest.
And anything but a peacemaker.