(OSV News) — Why would the president of the United States pick a fight with the pope?

After President Donald Trump launched repeated social media attacks and verbal chastisements aimed at Pope Leo XIV—in response to the pontiff’s perceived public criticisms of U.S. war against Iran—the question lingers.

The outbursts from the commander-in-chief were punctuated by the peculiar AI-generated art Trump shared on his Truth Social platform, depicting himself apparently as Jesus. Reactions—Catholic and otherwise—ranged from bemused disbelief to digital shouts of sacrilege. Trump deleted it and later posted a picture of himself being hugged by Jesus.

For an administration that both contains numerous high-ranking Catholics and celebrates itself as Catholic-friendly—even issuing presidential messages on the feast of St. Joseph, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and the feast day for St. Michael the Archangel—the faithful might be forgiven for recently suffering from a touch of vertigo.

“It’s strange and unnecessary,” Michael Genovese, a professor of political science and international relations at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, told OSV News.

“The question is: Why would you attack any religious leader—especially one as influential and as popular as Pope Leo? It makes no political sense to do so.”

Reflecting, however, Genovese produced a reason.

“I think it’s just that Donald Trump doesn’t want to be criticized—and when he’s criticized, he goes on the attack.”

Even if it’s the pope—who shepherds 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, including 53 million Americans.

Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, emphasized the departure from traditional diplomatic relations between heads of state.

“President Trump’s rant on social media against the pope insulted Pope Leo XIV and the office of the papacy,” Philpott told OSV News. “The pope is the head not only of the Catholic Church but also of a sovereign state, and thus merits the honor and respect that a fellow head of state shows through dignified language and civility.”

The Holy See and the United States have maintained diplomatic ties since 1984, when then-president Ronald Reagan and Pope St. John Paul II formally established them. A U.S. embassy was opened in April of the same year. Before that, since 1797, the U.S. cultivated consular relations with the Papal States, the portion of Italy ruled by the pope prior to Italian unification in 1870. The pope today rules over its successor and world’s smallest independent country, the Vatican City state, since 1929.

That’s a long time—and yet, there’s no historical memory of incidents like these, when a sitting U.S. president directly and repeatedly attacked a pope.

“One of my specialties is the American presidency,” David Barrett, a professor in the department of political science at Villanova University, Pope Leo’s alma mater, told OSV News. “And I just can’t think of anything like this. In the context of presidential history, it was shocking.”

Genovese couldn’t either.

“I have looked back … but I could not find any other example where there was a direct confrontation instigated by a president,” he said. “It just never made sense to do it. It makes no sense to do it now.”

“A lot of Catholics—myself, included—saw that picture as blasphemous,” Genovese added, referring to the Trump-as-Jesus scene, “and see his comments as being really so highly charged.”

Barrett was reminded of another U.S. president who shared a similar confrontational style.

“This seems really unprecedented,” he emphasized, “but in a way, that fits the pattern of the Trump presidency. He is, for better or worse, a president unlike all other presidents … but one president that he does remind me of is Andrew Johnson.”

Johnson, who assumed the presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and served until 1869, was known for his short temper and inflammatory speeches. At one public address, he reportedly referred to himself over 200 times and called for violence against opponents.

Numerous U.S. bishops and Catholic organizations joined with Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in coming to Pope Leo’s defense. Bishop Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez not only issued a statement, but reportedly had it read at Sunday Mass in his Palm Beach Diocese, which includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Florida, home, to underscore to the faithful the severity of the president’s attacks on Pope Leo.

Genovese said he believes Trump misunderstands the pope’s pastoral role.

“He says the pope’s weak on crime, and he’s terrible for foreign policy—as if Christianity were a national security doctrine. It’s not. It’s about the soul; it’s about faith; it’s about a moral voice; it’s about the Gospel,” he said. “So you’re talking about occupying two different worlds—the sacred and the profane. And Donald Trump doesn’t get that.”

Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo seemed to subside after the pontiff told reporters that his speeches in Africa were all written two weeks before Trump began his anti-papal tirades—and Vance tweeted he was grateful to the pope for saying he wasn’t attempting to debate Trump.

Now the question is whether these episodes will exact lasting political damage with voters for the term-limited president, those in his orbit like Catholic vice president JD Vance, that will seek to succeed him, and Trump’s Republican Party, which is facing an increasingly brutal midterm election environment.

Pope Leo is popular with his fellow Americans, 60% of whom approve of his performance, while just 36% approve of Trump’s, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released April 21. The poll also came in the wake of Pope Leo rebuking Trump’s threat to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” as “truly unacceptable.”

“President Trump has tried to make respect for and cooperation with the Catholic Church a part of his political message,” noted Philpott. “He garnered a solid 55% of support from Catholics in the 2024 election, and his vice president and secretary of state are open and devout Catholics.”

“Now, to speak to the pope in this way undermines the sincerity of this message,” he said. “The graphic of himself as Jesus that he put out … alienates Catholics, not to mention Christian voters, all the more. It is idolatrous and blasphemous.”

Philpott suggested Trump could have taken a different approach—as U.S. presidents have done in the past with the pope: “President Trump may legitimately disagree with the pope about the justice of his war. He might at least open by saying, ‘With respect, Your Holiness …’”

Philpott also deemed Trump’s social media eruptions “politically foolish.”

“He alienates his own likely voters, who skew religious, and deepens doubts about his aggressive war, which also runs against the promises he made to the electorate,” he said.

Genovese agreed.

“In the past when he’s committed these political sins, he’s always been able to rely on a solid 35% of the base. And no matter what, they have been loyal to him,” he said. “But he’s attacking the base right now. And so that could be really damaging.”

“It’s hard to think of any Catholic who will think well of either the image or what President Trump said,” Barrett observed. “The 25% of Catholics who call themselves strong supporters of President Trump … they won’t like this imagery and these comments, but they’re not going anywhere.”

Those who remain likely hope it will all blow over, suggested Barrett.

“Catholics who’ve been supporters of his, a few will be permanently alienated—but most of them will probably be saying, ‘OK, let’s just get past this.’ Because it’s unpleasant,” Barrett reflected. “If you’re a genuine Catholic and a genuine Trump supporter, what are you going to do?”

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