The US President has sharply attacked Pope Leo XIV. The Pope is "terrible" on foreign policy and "weak" on fighting crime, Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. He also claimed that the Pope should be "grateful" to him: "If I wasn't in the White House, he wouldn't be in the Vatican," Trump wrote.
Trump is "not a fan" of Pope Leo
The US president also stressed that he doesn't want a Pope who thinks it's normal for Iran to have nuclear weapons. He also did not want a head of the Roman Catholic Church who thought it was terrible that the US had attacked Venezuela.
With his “soft“ position, the Pope was harming himself and the Church, Trump claims: “Leo needs to pull himself together as a Pope, use his common sense and concentrate on being a great Pope, not a politician.“
Later, Trump added to reporters that the Pope is “politically very left“. That is why he himself “is not a fan of Pope Leo“.
Pope: Threats against Iran are “truly unacceptable”
The sharp criticism from the US president followed after the Pope called on Saturday for an end to all wars. “Stop! It's time for peace!“, he addressed the rulers.
Today too many people are suffering, too many innocent people are being killed. “I think someone should stand up and say that there is a better way“, Leo XIV continued. In his message he also included these words: “fantasies of omnipotence, which are becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive around us“. The pope later clarified that by “fantasies of omnipotence” he did not specifically mean Trump or any other politician, the newspaper “Die Zeit” indicates.
Recently, the calls for peace of the otherwise reserved pope have intensified - especially in connection with the war in Iran, recalls the German public media ARD. The head of the Roman Catholic Church described Trump's harsh threats against Iran as "truly unacceptable." He rejected the US president's attacks and assured that he was not afraid of him and his government.