At some point on Sunday night, between announcing a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and posting an AI image of himself as Jesus, Donald Trump also found time to call the Pope weak and terrible.
Not everyone let that slide.
Father Joseph DeMarzo of the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, was apparently done staying quiet and posted on X. “You are only a man @realDonaldTrump, and someday you will stand before our Lord Jesus Christ,” he wrote. “You claim our Holy Father is weak, but it takes more strength to do what one should rather than simply what one wants.”
DeMarzo went after Trump’s foreign policy, his war in Iran, and his alliance with Benjamin Netanyahu, writing that Trump and Netanyahu “undermine the true meaning of justice through continued acts of unconscionable war crimes, all in the name of ‘self-defense.'” He added: “But with the Lord, there will be no altering of words and their meaning; all that will be left is the truth of what really happened.”
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The message kept going. “You call the Holy Father weak because he calls for peace?” DeMarzo wrote. “What is weak is bombing children in Gaza in the name of national interest. What is weak is saying this is God’s country, yet by your actions you act as an enemy of the cross.” He closed with: “We are Christ first, not MAGA first. Our first allegiance is to God and His Kingdom. I only fear God.”
Trump had earned all of it.
Flying back to Washington from Florida on Sunday night, Trump posted a 334-word Truth Social broadside against Pope Leo XIV, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” accusing him of “catering to the Radical Left,” and claiming: “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” He also said he liked the Pope’s brother Louis better because Louis is, in Trump’s words, “all MAGA.”
Less than an hour after the post, Trump shared an AI image of himself in a biblical robe, laying hands on a bedridden man, with light emanating from his fingers, bald eagles circling overhead and an American flag filling the sky.
Meanwhile, on the other side of this exchange, the tone was very different.
Pope Leo responded with considerably more composure. Aboard the papal flight to Algiers on Monday, Leo said: “I have no fear of the Trump administration.” He added: “I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems. Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent people are being killed.”
Featured image via X screengrab
