god

Donald Trump is accustomed to criticism from coast to coast — Democrats, disaffected Republicans, late-night comedians, massive protests. Yet in his second presidency, Trump’s most influential American critic doesn’t live in the country but at the Vatican.

It’s an unprecedented situation, with the first American pope directly assailing the American president over the war in Iran, where a fragile ceasefire took hold this week. The announcement came after Pope Leo XIV declared that Trump’s belligerence was “truly unacceptable.”

Never before has the relationship between Washington and the Vatican revolved around two Americans — specifically, a 79-year-old politician from Queens and a 70-year-old pontiff from Chicago. They come from the same generation and share some common cultural roots yet bring jarringly distinct approaches to their positions of vast power. And the relationship comes with risks for both sides.

“They’re two white guy boomers but they could not be any more different in their life experiences, in their values, in the way they have chosen to live those values,” said theology professor Natalia Imperatori-Lee of Fordham University. “This is a very stark contrast, and I think an inflection point for American Christianity.”

Polar positions on Iran among U.S. Christians

Experts on the Catholic Church emphasized that Leo’s opposition to the war reflects established church teachings, not the reflexive politics of the moment.

“For the last five centuries, the church has been involved in a project of helping develop strong international norms,” including the Geneva Conventions in recent centuries, said Catholic University professor William Barbieri. “It is a very long-standing tradition rooted in Scripture and theology and philosophy.”

Yet the U.S. administration, which has close ties to conservative evangelical Protestant leaders, has claimed heavenly endorsement for Trump’s war on Iran.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urged Americans to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.” When Trump was asked whether he thought God approved of the war, he said, “I do, because God is good — because God is good and God wants to see people taken care of.”

The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of iconic Baptist evangelist Billy Graham, said of Trump that God “raised him up for such a time as this.” And Graham prayed for victory so Iranians can “be set free from these Islamic lunatics.”

Leo countered in his Palm Sunday message that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” He referenced an Old Testament passage from Isaiah, saying that “even though you make many prayers, I will not listen — your hands are full of blood.”

While it’s not unusual for popes and presidents to be at cross purposes, it’s exceedingly rare for the leader of the Catholic Church to directly criticize a U.S. leader, and Leo later named Trump directly and expressed optimism that the president would seek “an off-ramp” in Iran.

An even stronger condemnation came after Trump warned of mass strikes against Iranian power plants and infrastructure, writing on social media that “an entire civilization will die tonight.” Leo described that as a “threat against the entire people of Iran” and said it was “truly unacceptable.”

Experts: Leo doesn’t see himself as a Trump rival

Imperatori-Lee said Leo’s direct criticism stands out from the church’s more general critiques of political and social systems. For example, Pope Francis urged U.S. bishops to defend migrants without specifically mentioning Trump or his deportation agenda. Leo also previously called for humane treatment of migrants.

“Popes have critiqued unfettered capitalism before, very robustly. The popes have critiqued the Industrial Revolution, right? Things that the U.S. has been at the forefront of,” Imperatori-Lee said, “but it’s never been this specific and localized.”

She said Leo’s commentary resonates in the U.S. — with Catholics and non-Catholics — because he is a native English speaker.

“There’s no question about his inflection and meaning,” she said. “It removes any ambiguities.”

Trump welcomed Leo’s election last May as a “great honor” for the country, and he hasn’t responded to the latest criticisms. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“What Pope Leo and Donald Trump have in common is they both lived through the post-war polarization,” including the political upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War, said Steven Millies, a professor at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union, one of the pope’s alma maters.

He noted that Leo is a subscriber to The New York Times, plays the “Wordle” game, keeps up with U.S. sports and talks regularly with his brothers, including an avowed Trump supporter.

“In some ways he’s just like us,” Millies said, someone “who understands where our domestic political crisis came from,” unlike the Argentinian Francis, “who did not fully understand the peculiarities of the United States” even as he offered implicit criticism.

Barbieri said Leo’s American savvy still does not change an underappreciated reality of Catholicism and the papacy. “The Catholic Church doesn’t neatly fit into either right or left boxes as they’re understood in U.S. politics,” he said.

Leo’s global focus vs. Trump’s ‘transactional’ politics

Leo spent much of his pre-papal ministry, including all his time as a bishop and cardinal, outside the U.S.

He was educated in Rome as a canon lawyer within the church. He was a bishop in poor, rural swaths of Peru. He led the Augustinian order and served as Francis’ prefect for recommending bishop appointees around the world.

Imperatori-Lee said that global reach gave him a first-hand perspective on how Washington’s economic and military policies — including backing dictators in Latin America — have negatively affected less powerful nations and their citizens.

His varied experiences made then-Cardinal Robert Prevost uniquely suited to be elected pope despite the College of Cardinals’ traditional skepticism toward the U.S. and its superpower status. Millies argued that Trump and his advisers, even Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, may not appreciate those distinctions.

“This is an administration that seems to think only in terms of transactional politics — who’s for us and who’s against us,” he said.

Polarization poses risks for Leo and Trump

Relations between Washington and the Vatican have become so strained that a report of an allegedly contentious meeting involving Pentagon and Catholic Church officials sent shockwaves through both cities.

According to the report in The Free Press, a member of Trump’s administration warned the church in January not to stand in the way of U.S. military might.

The Vatican on Friday issued a statement rejecting the report’s characterization of the meeting, saying it “does not correspond to the truth in any way.”

The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See also pushed back, writing on social media that “deliberate misrepresentation of these routine meetings sows unfounded division and misunderstanding.”

Millies, meanwhile, questioned whether anything the pope or U.S. bishops say can sway individual Catholics. Trump is likely to lose support among Catholics as he loses support across the broader electorate, Millies said, but that’s not necessarily because members of Leo’s flock are applying church doctrine.

“Partisan preferences always trump the religious commitments,” Millies said, describing a “disconnect” between church leaders and many parishioners who look to other sources, politicians included, when shaping their views of faith and politics.

“The icon of Catholicism in American politics now is JD Vance, and it’s more about winning an argument,” he said. “It’s a very different emphasis, but it’s one that may suit the Trump administration very well.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Nicole Winfield in Rome and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

A war for the soul of the world is happening right now that’s straight out of the Bible — and I’m not just talking about the Middle East.

In one corner are President Trump and his minions, who insist that everything they do is divinely mandated. They have consistently invoked a violent version of God as they deport undocumented immigrants, try to make the United States whiter, rip up long-standing treaties with allies, rain down bombs like a biblical plague on supposed narco boats and choke nations they deem a threat or whose resources they covet.

They’re the ones who lecture religious leaders on what Jesus stood for, demanding blessings for Trump’s actions — or else.

Just check out the recent allegations in The Free Press that senior defense officials dressed down the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S. in January over Pope Leo XIV’s lack of enthusiasm for Trump’s imperialist ambitions. Or Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, he of the tattoos hailing the blood thirst of the Crusades (another Middle Eastern forever war that the “civilized” side lost), who compared the rescue of a downed American aviator in Iran over Easter weekend to the resurrection of Jesus.

It’s a playbook straight out of the Book of Revelations, which describes a Beast in the End Times with “a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies” in its quest to hold dominion over the earth.

In the other corner of this existential fight is an actual man of God: Pope Leo XIV.

Rather than cower before a despot who makes the Pharaoh in the Old Testament seem as stable and kind as St. Francis, the first American pope has resisted Trump like a protester at a “No Kings” rally. He has yet to denounce by name anyone in the president’s sordid orbit — but Pope Leo has returned to their actions again and again in his first year as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

He began his papacy by greeting a cheering crowd with “Peace be with you all” — what Jesus told his disciples after his Resurrection and a brilliant, biblical way to telegraph where he stands in our bellicose times.

On Palm Sunday a few weeks ago, the pontiff proclaimed during Mass in St. Peter’s Square that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war” — a not-so-subtle rebuke to Hegseth, who prayed shortly after the U.S. launched the Iran war for “every round [to] find its mark” and for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

For his first Easter message, Pope Leo wrote, “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue!”

Meanwhile, President Trump told a reporter that God supports the destruction he’s inflicting on Iran because “God is good. God wants to see people taken care of.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks to reporters at the Pentagon, July 16, 2025, in Washington.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

According to the Free Press article, the Vatican declined an invitation from Vice President JD Vance for Pope Leo to visit the U.S., for fear that Trump would use him as a political pawn. Instead, the man born in Chicago as Robert Prevost plans to spend July 4 — America’s 250th birthday — on a Mediterranean island that has long served as a gateway for migrants trying to make it to Europe.

Critics will accuse Pope Leo of Trump Derangement Syndrome and call him particularly short-sighted, since he stands athwart the desires of many American Catholics.

Though he isn’t Catholic, Trump has favored Catholicism far above any other mainline Christian denomination, from acknowledging feast days to packing his administration and the Supreme Court with adherents in a way that even Joe Biden — a lifelong Catholic — never did.

About 55% of Catholics voted for Trump in 2024, per the Pew Research Center. A survey last year by The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America found “a clear generational shift away from liberal self-identification” among younger priests. Dioceses across the country are reporting the highest amount of converts in decades, many of them drawn in by orthodox Catholic influencers.

But Trump’s embrace of Catholicism, like everything else in his life, has been conditional on fealty to him. His administration pulled tens of millions of federal funds from Catholic charities because they assisted migrants regardless of legal status — something the American Catholic church has done for over a century. Vance, himself a Catholic convert, accused bishops of being “worried about their bottom line” for daring to criticize the move and his boss’ deportation Leviathan.

The Free Press also reported that Trump’s lackeys invoked the Avignon Papacy — when 14th century French kings exiled a succession of popes from the Vatican and made them their puppets — during their browbeating of the Vatican ambassador.

Re-litigating history is an obsession of the Trump regime, so bringing up a medieval episode amounted to a threat to Leo to shape up — or else.

That’s what makes Pope Leo’s stance against a modern-day Babylon even braver. A pope’s main role is to bear witness to the words of Christ, who said far more about taking care of the meek and turning the other cheek than he did about waging war.

The best popes, from John XXIII to John Paul II, know that their words stand as a challenge for all people, believers and not, to create a better world that paves the way for the world to come. Trump wages war for himself; Pope Leo urges us to stand for something other than ourselves.

At this point in his reign, Trump is a dead ringer for the Antichrist, described in the Second Book of Thessalonians as a “man of sin … the son of perdition who opposeth and exalteth himself above all.”

Pope Leo would never characterize his opposition to Trump in such apocalyptic terms, of course. But his stance against the president’s tyranny is a call to action in the same vein as John Paul II’s exhortation to the free world to oppose the Soviet empire.

“Let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power,” Pope Leo stated on Easter, “and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil.”

Amen, amen, amen.

A loving husband and wife desperately want to start a family but struggle with infertility. A mother bears the weight of twin sons who are destined to be at severe odds with one another. Two sisters fall in love with the same man.

These stories may sound like soapy twists in a Taylor Sheridan drama or cable TV movie, but they actually come straight from one of the bestselling books of all time — the Bible.

The sacred text is jam-packed with compelling and highly relatable stories, but Fox’s “The Faithful: Women of the Bible,” a three-part event series, aims the spotlight on the primary matriarchs of the Book of Genesis — Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel. The first installment consists of two episodes airing Sunday, with subsequent double episodes airing over the next two weeks, and begins with the story of Sarah (Minnie Driver), who is regarded as the first matriarch for building the nation of Israel with her husband, Abraham (Jeffrey Donovan), the first patriarch.

“These are three generations of women who passed the baton of what was set in motion by Sarah and Abraham and the episodes are all in a way portraits of different types of marriages,” says René Echevarria, who wrote the first installment and is the series’ showrunner.

However, like the Bible’s many miracles, “The Faithful” coming together in the first place is divine considering executive producing partners Carol Mendelsohn and Julie Weitz were actually not planning to pitch it when they were in a meeting with Fox TV executives on one fateful day.

“The Faithful” begins with the story of Sarah (Minnie Driver) and Abraham.

(Moris Puccio / Fox)

“Julie gave me one instruction, ‘We can talk about all of our projects but do not talk about the Bible,’” recalls Mendelsohn. But then Fox President Michael Thorn asked Mendelsohn what her passion project was and “It was like I was hit by the burning bush!”

So “The Faithful” was pitched and a green light was given for the show. “I guess it was divinely ordered,” Mendelsohn says, laughing.

Crafting a Bible-based event series may initially seem like a stretch for Mendelsohn, known for producing the massively popular “CSI” crime drama franchise and, since partnering with Weitz over a decade ago, contemporary dramas where God wasn’t a part of the story. However, with “The Faithful,” the common thread with their previous projects was very clear. “Everything that we do together comes from characters that we fall deeply in love with and we love to do stories about women,” says Weitz. “We were thinking of doing something in this world when “The Chosen” [the Prime Video series about Jesus Christ] came out and became a huge hit.”

Mendelsohn and Weitz brought Echevarria on board and once they dug into the respective stories of these influential women, “it became clear that we should give two hours to each of these matriarchs and tell that story, which is the genesis of not just Judaism, but Islam and Christianity, the three largest, most prominent religions of mankind,” says Weitz, who is also grateful for Fox’s programming strategy for the episodes. “It worked nicely because they are giving us Sunday Nights leading right through Passover and into Easter so it just made sense to [Fox] too.”

For varying perspectives, the show utilized both Christian and Jewish scholars, which backed up their storytelling objectives, given that these age-old stories traditionally didn’t always flesh out women as much as men, so leaning into an interpretation of text was not taboo. “Our Jewish scholar mentioned, ‘what you’re doing is called midrash, an ancient tradition in Judaism to look at these stories and read between the lines,’” says Echevarria.

That interpretive freedom can be seen in the show’s first installment, which explores Genesis 16 where Sarah, barren for years despite God having told Abraham that she would bear a child in her older age, enlists former Egyptian slave Hagar (Natacha Karam) to sleep with her husband in the hopes she’ll give them a child. Driver says Sarah’s story is one that many women can connect with, but as far as who the real woman was, there’s a lack of true definition. “Who knows what Sarah was like? We don’t know. She doubted and, to some people, she thwarted God, but actually to me, she was just a woman who wanted to have a baby, loved her husband very much and was very strong,” she says.

Natacha Karam plays Egyptian slave Hagar, who bears Abraham’s child.

(Stefano Cristiano Montesi / Fox)

Donovan notes that Sarah suggesting Abraham lie with Hagar in Genesis 16 initially comes across as a straightforward and simple sentence. “But there’s so much to unpack in that one line from the Bible,” he says. “The complex struggles that these three people must have had that people today are still having 4,000 years later? We’re still going, ‘I can’t have a baby. Let’s have her have our baby. But do you like her? Is she better than me?’”

But as much as Sarah’s plight with infertility is relatable, other moments in the story took more work to get there, like the moment where Abraham talks with God. “I can only imagine what it would feel like to speak to God,” Donovan says.

To grapple with that notion before shooting this particular scene, the actor, dressed in his character’s tunic and waiting on the crew to set up, found a spot to sit on under a tree and thought about Abraham’s daily life and how impactful a message from God would be. “He’s a shepherd that got up with the sun and watched his flock and tried to survive,” Donovan says. “‘How do I not die today? How do I feed my family?’ For me to give the respect to the character, that deserves a couple of hours of solace and solitude.” He calls it the most difficult scene in the series for him.

And while the show explores Sarah and Abraham’s marriage, it also dives into the relationship between Sarah and Hagar, which begins when a captive Sarah is freed and she takes slave Hagar with her to give her a better life.

“Hagar finds herself pulled into this story that’s far larger than anything that she could ever have imagined for herself,” says Karam, adding that the two women grow close but conflicts also arise. “Originally, the relationship is defined by hierarchy and necessity and then there’s this complicated dependence that bounds them together for life.”

The actor expressed her satisfaction that the story of Sarah and Hagar is given a positive portrayal since that’s not always been the case. “There are versions of that story that are read through a lens of reprimanding both of these women, which I want to say is shocking but it was actually quite predictable to spin it so that it ends up being, ‘Oh, look what these two women did when they tried to take control,’” she says.

“Hagar finds herself pulled into this story that’s far larger than anything that she could ever have imagined for herself,” says Natacha Karam, left, with Minnie Driver and Jeffrey Donovan.

(Moris Puccio / Fox)

The spin from the cast and crew on the production itself was that with all “The Faithful” episodes filming in the ancient city of Rome, the series benefited from what the city had to offer in terms of scenic authenticity. Also, the unforgiving heat while shooting outdoor scenes wasn’t fun but also wasn’t a total negative, says Driver. “I’ve never been outside in 100-plus degree heat for 10 or 11 hours a day. It was brutal, but it definitely lent to the veracity of the story like where you were so beyond hot and exhausted,” she says. “There’s a generosity of its history that you’re invited in. It was this fever dream, the whole experience of being there.”

And while the Sarah-Abraham-Hagar story fills out the first episode, the March 29 installment continues the drama with the introduction of Rebekah (Alexa Davalos), who marries Sarah and Abraham’s son, Isaac (Tom Mison). Also barren for many years, she eventually receives a message directly from God that she will have twin sons and that her youngest son will one day rule. With the arrival of Esau (Ben Robson), who is born first, and Jacob (Tom Payne), she’s faced with a burden to ensure God’s message stays on course at any cost. “The story becomes about how she almost destroys her family because she’s been told that this is the way, this is the destiny,” says Weitz.

The April 5 finale, airing on Easter Sunday, moves forward as a now-exiled Jacob returns to his hometown and meets two sisters, Leah (Millie Brady) and Rachel (Blu Hunt), and sparks fly. Teases Echevarria, “tonally the episode is a little bit different and it’s a little more scandalous but certainly contemporary.” Adds Weitz, “Jacob falls in love with both of the sisters for different reasons and at different times so it becomes a story about sister rivalry for the love of the same man.”

Love is something audiences have been feeling in recent years for faith-inspired programs, which keeps this three-week event from feeling like a television anomaly. For example, Prime Video’s “The Chosen” has been exploring the life of Jesus Christ (Jonathan Roumie) for five seasons with a sixth season centered on Jesus’ crucifixion coming later this year. Also, on March 27, Prime Video launches the second season of “House of David,” which follows the journey of young shepherd David (Michael Iskander) from slaying a certain giant named Goliath to becoming the king of Israel. And earlier this month, faith-centric streamer the Wonder Project wrapped the first season of its contemporary drama series, “It’s Not Like That,” starring Scott Foley as a widowed minister raising his kids and finding love again. Plus, no Easter holiday would feel right without ABC’s annual broadcast of the 1956 classic film “The Ten Commandments,” airing April 4.

Why is faith TV having a moment now? The appetite for this kind of programming by audiences could reflect the often-bleak world of the 21st century we live in, offers Karam. “These are stories about people who are in the middle of impossible circumstances, who can’t see what the lesson is yet, or whether there’s light on the other side,” she says. “But historically, there always was and there always is [light on the other side] so I think that’s what people are hungry for right now is a framework to make sense of things.”

As long as this hunger continues and audiences show up for “The Faithful,” the producers have a wealth of stories to tell beyond the great matriarchs.

“The difference from a regular TV show is that we do have this extraordinary IP and this different perspective,” says Echevarria. “Our hope is that ours will always be a little different and we’d come at it from a different angle.” Sounds like the faith is definitely being kept.