Pope

“I’m not afraid.”

With these three words Sunday morning, Pope Leo XIV offered as powerful a rebuke of President Trump and everything he has wrought on the world as anyone ever has.

Three words that mocked Trump for being the bully that he is.

Three words that undercut Trump’s self-hyped aura of invincibility.

Three words to inspire all good people to fight against Trump — because if a mild-mannered man of God such as Leo isn’t afraid, no one should be.

Pope Leo’s words thrilled me as an American but especially as a Catholic. His quiet, confident witness since becoming pontiff in May had already reignited a spiritual light in me to adhere closer to the faith I was brought up in.

Trump’s actions during his second term — war, deportations, nasty rhetoric and a love of himself above all else — have been like fuel to that fire. They stand against everything I was ever taught was good and holy.

Hearing Leo’s simple smackdown of the president, at a time when too many people insist we must sink to Trump’s lows to beat him, is like receiving a sacrament I never knew I needed.

Leo spoke a few hours after Trump trashed him on social media, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” — all because of the pope’s critiques of perpetual wars and this country’s vile treatment of undocumented immigrants, while never mentioning anyone by name.

Until now.

“I’m not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what the church works for,” he told reporters while traveling to Algeria to kick off a 10-day African mission. He repeated the message later, stating: “I have no fear.”

In response, Trump melted down like the Nazis at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” critiquing the pope to reporters and then posting an image on social media of himself as a robed savior healing a sick man, light emanating from his hands.

This pathetic fusillade offended even Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who has made a career of trashing liberal Catholics and who defended Trump last year after the president shared an image of himself in papal robes and mitre after the death of Pope Francis. This time, Donohue deemed Trump’s Christ-like imagery “offensive and immature.”

President Trump waves as he returns to the White House on Sunday. During a short interaction with reporters, he blasted Pope Leo XI as “very liberal.”

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

The president has a lot to fear these days, and not just because he violated most of the Ten Commandments with his bonkers Jesus post, which quickly disappeared. One of the few sane adults left in his administration must have reminded him that antagonizing Catholics is a terrible political move. About 55% of them voted for him in the 2024 election, many in swing states such as Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that had sided with Joe Biden — a Catholic — four years before.

A Fox News poll released last week found that only 48% of Catholics nationwide approve of Trump’s overall performance. While 57% of white Catholics still support Trump, a majority of them aren’t happy with his actions in Iran — the issue that’s turning out to be a millstone around his neck.

Trump’s second term has been a nightmare that seems to worsen every day. Yet not only is this country still standing, but more and more people are waking up to the mockery he’s made of American values. One of the new warriors is Leo, who told reporters he spoke out not to sway politics in his home country, but to offer, in his role as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, a reminder of what Jesus practiced and preached.

No wonder Trump, who wants to erect idols to himself like a Canaanite king, is so upset.

May Leo’s words wake up more good people, regardless of their faith, to rise against Trump — and especially stir lapsed Catholics to return to Mother Church.

U.S. Catholics have long served as a barometer of acceptance for newcomers and the working class. But only about 20% of Americans identify as Catholic, per a Pew Research Center study released last year. And only 30% of those Catholics attend Mass weekly. Many more leave the faith than adopt it, at rates that far exceed other Christian denominations. This collapse has allowed the Catholic church’s conservative wing to take over, departing from the historic mission and instead leading us to Trump.

My lifelong commitment to social justice and my eternal skepticism of power and avarice comes from what I learned growing up at St. Boniface in Anaheim. I even had aspirations to become a priest, because I find few things more noble than dedicating your life to helping others.

I stopped attending Mass once I began covering the church’s sex abuse scandals as a journalist. I was outraged that men who held themselves up to be the custodians of God on Earth not only allowed such crimes to happen but usually covered them up and shunted off the offenders to poor parishes like mine.

I never stopped praying or considering myself a Catholic — but I couldn’t bring myself to support institutions headed by men such as L.A. Archbishop José H. Gómez and Diocese of Orange Bishop Kevin Vann, who always seem to have sharp words for progressives but never for Trump.

It’s been a long road back for me to openly write about my faith with pride — but Trump’s continued heresies have made it necessary. I still don’t know when or if I’ll start attending Mass again regularly, but the fact that I’m even thinking about it shows Leo’s impact on me.

Recently, someone I was interviewing noticed my scapular of the Santo Niño de Atocha with the word “Amor” on the other side. Last year, I tucked this simple necklace that’s a sign of devotion inside the plastic sleeve holding my Los Angeles Times badge, along with a few religious medals.

Pope Leo caused that. Trump caused that. Any chance to talk about my Catholic faith and why Trump is bad, I’m going to take.

I’m not afraid.

WASHINGTON — President Trump was propelled into office in large part by support from evangelicals and Catholics, at times framing his political rise in divine terms.

But that relationship is now fraying, and, in some corners of the Catholic Church, breaking, after Trump spent the weekend maligning Pope Leo XIV — “Leo is WEAK on Crime” — and circulating a widely condemned social media post depicting himself as Jesus Christ.

Leo, meanwhile, on Monday repeated his calls for an end of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. “I have no fear of neither the Trump administration nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel,” Leo told reporters. “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Trump had lashed out at the pontiff in a Truth Social post on Sunday night and repeated those criticisms Monday. “I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo,” he said. “He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime. He’s a man that doesn’t think we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world.”

The tirade drew swift backlash from Catholic leaders and rank-and-file believers alike, who have increasingly withdrawn support from the president since he and Israel launched attacks on Iran, according to recent polls.

Also fueling backlash was the artificial-intelligence-generated image of Trump, in a white robe and a red stole, placing his hand on the forehead of a man in a hospital bed. Trump confirmed he had posted the image but insisted he thought it portrayed him as a doctor, not Jesus healing the sick.

That’s not how many people viewed it.

“In the Christian faith, this is considered blasphemy: depicting yourself as Christ, elevating yourself to the level of Christ,” conservative commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin said on “The View.” “Our faith is bigger than our politics. That is one thing that will always trump politics for people who are practicing in their faith. He clearly doesn’t understand that.”

The Rev. Thomas Reese, who also works as an analyst at Religious News Service, called Trump’s AI-generated image “an absolute disaster and blasphemous,” adding that it appeared to unsettle even some of the president’s religious supporters. The post was later removed from Truth Social.

More broadly, Reese said the war itself, and the way it has been framed, is colliding with core church teaching.

“To invoke God for a war of choice is just wrong,” he said, noting that Catholic leaders have increasingly emphasized diplomacy and reconciliation over military action.

“The Catholics who voted for him feel betrayed,” Reese said. “I think they’re beginning to say, ‘This is not what we voted for,’ especially when you tie the war to higher gasoline prices, higher food prices.”

In his Truth Social post, Trump also took some credit for Leo’s election as pontiff last year after the death of Pope Francis, writing that Leo was chosen “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.”

Tensions had been simmering between the two leaders for months, but boiled over after Trump issued a threat to use the U.S. military to wipe out all of Iranian civilization.

At a peace vigil at St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday, Leo said that a “delusion of omnipotence” is fueling the war that has left thousands dead. Though he did not name Trump, the pope has repeatedly cautioned against invoking religion to justify violence.

Many Trump supporters have claimed he had a divine mandate, and Trump himself has repeatedly asserted that God saved him in the July 2024 assassination attempt so that he could lead the United States.

His administration has undertaken extraordinary efforts to infuse Christianity into government functions — establishing a White House Faith Office and holding prayer services at the Pentagon and the Labor Department.

After Iran shot down a U.S. fighter jet on April 3, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth compared the rescue of one of the aviators to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection: “Shot down on a Friday, Good Friday. Hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday. A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing.”

A military watchdog group last month said it had received more than 200 complaints from U.S. service members reporting that military commanders were telling troops that the Iran war was part of a divine plan by God to trigger Armageddon. A group of Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation into whether military operations were being guided by “end-times prophecy.”

Catholics rallied for Trump in 2024, when 55% of voting Catholics cast their ballots for Trump, clocking in at 12 points higher than his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.

But he’s steadily lost their support since the onset of the war, according to new bipartisan polling. Some 52% of Catholics say they disapprove of the president’s job performance, according to one survey by Republican pollster Shaw & Co. Research and Democratic pollster Beacon Research. Another 23% say they strongly approve of the job he is doing and another 25% somewhat approve.

Consisting of about a quarter of the U.S. population, the Catholic voting bloc has long been regarded as the bellwether demographic, having historically chosen the winner of the popular vote in nearly every presidential election for the last 50 years.

Since ascending to the throne of St. Peter, Leo has frequently clashed with the administration on issues ranging from immigration to foreign policy, emphasizing humanitarian concerns and diplomacy over force.

That attitude appears to be resonating in the pews. Reese, the commentator and priest, pointed to growing frustration among Catholic voters, including some who backed Trump in 2024 expecting an end to prolonged Middle East conflicts.

Reflecting on church history, he said: “The papacy survived Attila the Hun. They survived Napoleon, they survived Mussolini and they survived Hitler. They will survive Trump.”

In AD 452, when Attila the Hun sacked city after city in his conquest of the known world, it was the Catholic Church, not the Roman military, that met him in a show of diplomacy. The pontiff of the time, who persuaded Attila to turn his army back and spare Rome, was called Pope Leo I.

April 13 (UPI) — President Donald Trump lashed out at Pope LeoXIV over his criticism of the war in Iran, claiming a reason the American was named pontiff was because the Church was trying to curry favor with his administration.

Since being elected the first American head of the Catholic Church in May, Pope Leo has criticized the Trump administration’s policies, particularly its aggressive immigration crackdown and military campaigns. As the war in Iran has continued, the Chicago native has ramped up his criticism of the New York real estate mogul and his administration.

Seemingly in response, Trump on Sunday called the pope “WEAK on Crime and Terrible for Foreign Policy.”

“Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. 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,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social platform. “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

Amid the conflict, Pope Leo has repeatedly called for an end to the war in Iran and other conflicts, most often without mentioning the warring parties or their leaders by name.

In seemingly pointed remarks in late March, the pope said God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” Then early this month, the pontiff, speaking in Italian, described Trump’s threat to destroy “the whole Iranian civilization,” as “truly unacceptable!”

In his late Sunday statement, Trump said he preferred Leo’s eldest brother Louis Prevost, a noted supporter of the president’s far-right nationalist Make America Again movement.

“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,” Trump said.

“It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!”

Catholic Americans constituted a major electoral bloc in Trump’s 2024 election victory. According to the Pew Research Center, about 55% of Catholic voters cast ballots for Trump compared to 43% for his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Kamala Harris.

The statement comes as pressure mounts on Trump over the war in Iran, which was launched jointly with Israel on Feb. 28. During the current two-week cease-fire, U.S. efforts to secure a permanent end to the war are ongoing as calls from Democrats and critics for his ouster grow louder.

“The deranged and disgusting post from Trump attacking Pope Leo should certainly help him appeal to the more than 50 million Americans who identify as Catholics. Perhaps this will convince JD Vance to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said in a statement referring to the vice president, who is Catholic, and his ability to invoke a constitutional mechanism that could lead to Trump’s removal from the White House.

Leo, ​who last year became the first US-born pope, has emerged as an outspoken critic of the US-Israeli ⁠war on Iran.

United States President Donald Trump has unleashed a storm of criticism at Pope Leo XIV, calling him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy”.

Trump delivered the unusual criticism of the head of the Catholic Church in a Sunday night post on social media, saying he does not “want a Pope who criticises the President of the United States”.

Trump’s outburst appeared to be triggered by recent remarks from Pope Leo critical of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Last week, Leo issued a rare direct rebuke of Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilisation, calling it “truly unacceptable“. And then, on Sunday, the 70-year-old pontiff implored leaders to end ongoing bloodshed, condemning what he described as a “delusion of omnipotence” fuelling war – comments that appeared directed at Trump.

The pope has also previously questioned the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies, saying, “I don’t know if that’s ⁠pro-life.”

Taking to Truth Social, Trump wrote: “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela.”

“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,” said the US president.

Trump also claimed credit for Leo’s leadership in the Catholic Church, suggesting the Vatican picked the first US-born pontiff – elected last year – to curry favour with the White House. “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican,” Trump said.

Asked about the comments later on Sunday, Trump reiterated that he is “not a big fan” of Leo, who he said “is not doing a very good job”.

“He likes crime, I guess,” said Trump. “He’s a very liberal person.”

Trump also had a rocky relationship with Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, who criticised Trump’s ‌immigration ‌policy proposals when he first ran for president and suggested Trump was “not a Christian“. Trump had called Francis “disgraceful” in early 2016.

Leo is set to begin an 11-day trip to Africa on Monday, starting with a historic visit to Muslim-majority Algeria.

Pope Leo XIV on Saturday called on world leaders to reject war as a means of settling their differences, urging a global commitment to peace.

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.

April 5 (UPI) — Pope Leo XIV on Sunday beseeched world leaders to “lay down” the weapons of war and use “dialogue” rather than force as the means to bring about peace.

In the annual Urbi et Orbi address delivered by the presiding Catholic pontiff each Easter Sunday in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Leo said the holy day can provide a light from Christ allowing hearts “to be transformed by his immense love for us.

“Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace. Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue. Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them,” Leo said in his first Easter address as pontiff.

An estimated 50,000 people jammed the Roman square to hear Leo’s Urbi et Orbi Easter Mass homily, or “To the City and the World,” in which he warned against allowing “indifference” to blunt the impact of war’s devastation as conflicts raged in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere in the world.

“We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent,” he said. “Indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people. Indifferent to the repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow. Indifferent to the economic and social consequences they produce, which we all feel.”

Instead, he declared, “We cannot continue to be indifferent! And we cannot resign ourselves to evil!”

Leo, the first American pope, has been a frequent critic of U.S. President Donald Trump, but did not specifically mention him or any other leader or country during the Easter homily. Rather, he anti-war remarks were universal.

“On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, 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,” Leo urged.

In his time as pope, Leo has established a track record of issuing unambiguous calls for peace.

Last month, for instance, he voiced a direct demand for an end to the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran as the conflict entered its third week.

“On behalf of the Christians of the Middle East, and of all women and men of good will, I appeal to those responsible for this conflict: Cease fire!,” the pope said during the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square on March 15.

Pope Leo washed the feet of 12 priests in a Holy Thursday ritual, using the moment to urge Catholics to stand with the oppressed. His remarks come after he criticised the Trump administration on the Iran war and called for an end to the fighting.