A wide range of prominent conservatives excoriated President Donald Trump for posting a 334-word tirade against Pope Leo XIV to social media late Sunday and following it up with an image appearing to depict him dressed as Jesus healing a sick man.
The president at 9 p.m. ET Sunday posted the initial screed to Truth Social, accusing the first-ever U.S.-born pontiff of being “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” adding, “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela.” Less than 45 minutes later, he posted a picture, likely AI-generated with origins dating back to at least February, showing him dressed in a robe with a beam of light coming out of one hand and his other placed on a sick man’s head — with a large American flag, two bald eagles and the Statue of Liberty in the background.
A spokesperson for Vice President JD Vance, the highest-ranking Catholic in the Trump administration, declined to comment to the Daily Caller News Foundation. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, also a Catholic, did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment on the matter.
Trump appeared to remove the post on Monday morning following the widespread criticism.
“Why? Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this,” women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines wrote on X early Monday, referring to the image. “Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this?”
“Either way, two things are true. 1) a little humility would serve him well 2) God shall not be mocked,” she added.
“I assume someone has already told him, but it behooves the President both spiritually and politically to delete the picture, no matter the intent,” The Daily Wire host Michael Knowles wrote in a late Sunday X post sent right before midnight.
Knowles, a prominent conservative Catholic commentator, wrote in a post to the platform one hour earlier, “Despite all the sizzling hot takes on the Pope’s press statements about the President and the President’s post about the Pope, I don’t think any have summed up the situation better than Pope Gelasius did in his letter to Emperor Anastasius in AD 494.”
“I pray your Piety not to judge [my] duty toward the divine plan as arrogance. Far be it from the Roman Prince, I beg, that he judge the truth that he senses in his heart to be an injury,” an excerpt of the lengthy letter Knowles posted read.
“This is gross blasphemy. Faith is not a prop,” conservative youth activist Brilyn Hollyhand wrote in an X post including a video reacting to the image. “You don’t need to portray yourself as a savior when your record should speak for itself. The same God who saved Trump’s life from that bullet sent His son Jesus to die for our sins. He died for Trump just as much as for you and I.”
“On Orthodox Easter, President Trump attacked the Pope because the Pope is rightly against Trump’s war in Iran and then he posted this picture of himself as if he is replacing Jesus,” former Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X late Sunday. “This comes after last week’s post of his evil tirade on Easter and then threatening to kill an entire civilization. I completely denounce this and I’m praying against it!!!”
“Oh hell no,” British right-wing activist Milo Yiannopoulos, a Catholic, wrote on X, in response to the provocative image. “We tolerated this kind of meme against our better judgment because he [Trump] promised to save America and only when it was clear he didn’t actually think he was the Messiah.”
“Why do I feel like Paula White did this to him, and to us?,” Yiannopoulos added, referring to Protestant pastor Paula White-Cain, the senior advisor to Trump’s White House Faith Office. “Pray for his [Trump’s] soul. Pray for us all.”
“The statements made by President Trump on Truth Social regarding the Pope were entirely inappropriate and disrespectful,” Bishop Robert Barron of Winona–Rochester, a prominent Catholic theologian and media personality, posted on X Monday morning.
“They don’t contribute at all to a constructive conversation. It is the Pope’s prerogative to articulate Catholic doctrine and the principles that govern the moral life,” he emphasized. “In regard to the concrete application of those principles, people of good will can and do disagree.”
“I would warmly recommend that serious Catholics within the Trump administration–Secretary Rubio, Vice President Vance, Ambassador Brian Burch, and others–might meet with Vatican officials so that a real dialogue can take place,” the bishop added, saying such a conversation would be “far preferable to the statements on social media.”
“I am very grateful for the many ways that the Trump administration has reached out to Catholics and other people of faith. It has been a high honor to serve on the Religious Liberty Commission. No President in my lifetime has shown a greater dedication to defending our first liberty,” Barron concluded. “All that said, I think the President owes the Pope an apology.”
“I have no fear of the Trump administration,” the pope told reporters Monday in response to Trump’s unprecedented attacks against him.
“I will not enter into debate. The things that I say are certainly not meant as attacks on anyone,” Leo added. “The message of the Gospel is very clear: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ I will not shy away from announcing the message of the Gospel and inviting all people to look for ways of building bridges of peace and reconciliation, and looking for ways to avoid war any time that’s possible.”
Trump had written in his lengthy late Friday post to Truth Social that,  the pope “talks about ‘fear’ of the Trump Administration, but doesn’t mention the FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart.”
“And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States 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,” the president added.
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