This past week, President Donald Trump appeared to be dedicated to a mission to destroy every last positive relationship he has with Catholic voters.

This shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anybody who’s been tuning in to politics for longer than a year. Trump has surrounded himself with some of the most severe critics of Catholicism in America. For example, Doug Wilson, a Protestant pastor connected to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, is actively prejudiced against Catholics and has expressed hopes for a disgusting, twisted version of Christian theocracy where Catholics would be unable to hold public office, vote, or even meet publicly. Wilson has also stated that he does not believe in the Pope or in apostolic succession.

Besides Wilson, Trump’s own spiritual advisor, Paula White-Cain, has made several horrifying statements that relate in no way to any actual scripture. While White-Cain hasn’t really made any direct controversial statements attacking Catholics herself, she has wildly claimed that President Trump, who is non-denominational and publicly celebrated his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism, is connected to God. More specifically, she has claimed the following: that Trump’s presidency is a major part of God’s plan, that his term is guaranteed to be successful as a result, and that his legal troubles are comparable to the Passion of the Christ.

But most importantly, White-Cain has claimed that opposing Donald Trump is “equivalent to opposing God.” This disgusting statement, and many other similar statements made by the two Protestant advisors, are likely what sparked this recent controversy.

The Truth Social posts

Tensions had been slowly rising between the Holy See and America since Trump’s second term started. As Trump was going through with mass deportations, or more accurately, was pretending to deport more than 500K people to appeal to low-IQ fans of his, Pope Leo was coming out with statements hoping that mass deportations could be carried out without violence.

This was twisted by MAGA to make regular people believe that Pope Leo was against deporting illegals, even though Leo had stated he was against mass migration multiple times. More specifically, the Pope had, in the past, called mass migration a serious problem that “needs to be solved”, simply asking for it to happen with respect to the individual.

Amongst rumors such as this, the Pope, as expected of the head of the Catholic Church, continued not to comment on specific political matters, only making statements based on scripture, which has been most apparent during the Iran War. Pope Leo has described the Iranian conflict as an “unjust war” due to the circumstances in which the attacks in Iran started. What happened after Pope Leo made his stance on the Iran war clear was absolutely embarrassing for somebody in Trump’s position.

Trump went on an insane, nutty rant in which he claimed that the Pope, then Robert Prevost (Francis was pope in 2020; Leo was serving under his birth name as Bishop of Chiclayo) had remained silent when the government was targeting Catholic churches during COVID, a hilarious claim since President Trump had enforced many of these restrictions himself during 2020, the last full year of his first term.

He also claimed that the Pope was completely fine with Iran possessing nuclear weapons. This claim is wildly untrue, as Leo has repeatedly called for global nuclear disarmament, ending the arms race, and achieving peace through dialogue.

Even ignoring the Pope’s stance on Iran, which disproves Trump’s claims on its own, Iran has stated that its enriched uranium was being used for civilian purposes. Regardless, Iran had offered to provide all of their enriched uranium to America in exchange for keeping a reactor given to them by President Eisenhower, which could not even make more enriched uranium. Trump unjustly attacked Iran anyway, which is what caused Pope Leo to state that the Iranian conflict was unjust.

Trump notably also used the Pope’s family against him (although he himself was a registered Republican before ascending to the Papacy) before going on the usual “this guy doesn’t like me, he’s a LIBERAL” spiel throughout the rest of the post.

After the post was made, Pope Leo asserted that he had no “fear” of the Trump administration in response to comments Trump had made at the beginning of the post. He stated that he also had no fear of “speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the Church is here to do.”

RT also shared a clip where Pope Leo stated the “message of the Gospel was being abused,” and that far too many innocents are dying nowadays to ignore this fact. He also confirmed that he did not see his role as being political whatsoever.

Trump’s response to that has become the most unpopular action that he has ever partaken in, even amongst the mentally unwell boomers who endlessly praise him.

After his initial attack, Trump chose to completely tarnish the name of the Lord by posting an image of himself dressed in attire that has been worn in the past by the Pope and by Jesus. Even his most loyal supporters were angered by said post and harassed him on his own app.

After his initial attack, Trump chose to completely tarnish the name of the Lord by posting an image of himself dressed in attire that has been worn in the past by the Pope and by Jesus. Even his most loyal supporters were angered by said post and harassed him on his own app.

Trump ended up deleting the post and claiming that the image depicted him as a Red Cross doctor, but the excuses did nothing to keep millions of X users off his back.

Attacks from other MAGA supporters

Ultimately, Trump has not apologized for disrespecting the Lord, and his supporters have done nothing to defend the Pope, despite many of them claiming to be Catholics themselves.

Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic politician, did nothing to defend his Pope and instead tried to justify both Trump’s initial post and his deleted AI post, before stating that the Pope “should be careful when speaking about church teachings.” Vance seemingly did not care that the Pope's entire argument was that America was entering an "unjust war" based on how the Iranian conflict started, and instead diminished the argument to both criticize the Pope's hopes for total peace and make it appear that the Pope would have been against the Iranian conflict if there was a just cause for conflict.

Michael Knowles, an employee of the pro-Zionist Daily Wire, initially very weakly pushed back against Trump before caving and taking his side, stating that Trump was merely agreeing to disagree in an attempt to convince Catholic voters that he could still earn their votes ahead of the upcoming midterms.

Most notably, Sean Hannity, who spat on the Catholic Church after it refused to recognize the now 3x-married woman with whom he was cheating on his ex-wife, and who has now claimed he no longer is a Catholic, ironically claimed that the Pope, the head of the Church which represents almost 2/3 of all Christians, had “totally lost sight of the Bible and its teachings," a message which has gained the attention of many anti-Trump Republicans.

Result

Despite all of the attacks from MAGA in an attempt to discredit a huge percentage of Christians, Pope Leo’s popularity has seemingly not been affected at all.

In a survey published by Newsweek on April 17th, Pope Leo had bested Trump in overall popularity (42% approval as opposed to Trump’s 41% approval), and was far less likely to be criticized in polls (just 8% disapproval as opposed to Trump’s 53%). Most polls taken since Leo’s ascension to the Papacy have shown similar results, which is fantastic news since members of the Trump administration have been trying to slander him for months.

Many other users on sites such as X have noted the sharp contrast between the popularity that Leo enjoys and the hatred that Trump suffers through.

Despite Leo remaining just as popular in America as he was when he became Pope, it should still be noted that President Trump is completely willing to throw Christians under the bus when it suits his agenda. However, it does appear that the Pope and many of the members of Trump’s administration are trying to stay neutral and keep Trump on a leash. The Pope himself stated yesterday that it is not in his interest to continue to debate Trump, regardless of who is correct.

Regardless of any attempts to diminish the effect that Trump has had on Catholic voters, the best move to make looking forward is to vote against Republicans in the midterms: Catholic voters already appear likely to vote against candidates supported by Trump, based on their disapproval of the Iranian conflict and how Trump has treated Pope Leo. Other voters would be very wise to participate in voting Democrat, or if it absolutely HAS to be done as a last resort, withhold their vote, to force the GOP to put up a TRUE Catholic, America First candidate, who will treat the Pope and all other bishops with the respect that they deserve.