Is the Pope American? No, He’s Catholic

Donald Trump has unleashed a diatribe against Pope Leo XIV on Truth Social that brings the simmering imbroglio between the two most powerful Americans in the world to a boil. On one side, there’s the New York-born chief executive of the planet’s paramount military superpower. On the other, Chicago-born Robert Prevost, supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church and chief spiritual advisor of nearly 1.4 billion believers. Their battlefield may seem global, but the ultimate goal is parochial: the hearts and minds and votes of US Catholics.

Trump fired off his social media broadside in the early hours of his Monday morning. It called Leo “WEAK” on several fronts: Iran’s potential nuclear weapons, crime, immigration and politics. He said he prefers Louis Prevost, Leo’s brother, who is “all MAGA. Louis gets it, and Leo doesn’t!” He also implied that Leo owed him because he’d only been elected pope because the College of Cardinals “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.”