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The tirade drew swift backlash from Catholic leaders and rank-and-file believers alike, who have increasingly withdrawn support from the president since he and Israel launched attacks on Iran, according to recent polls.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