April 19, 2026, 5:04 a.m. ET
For many Catholic supporters of President Donald Trump, it’s been a rocky April.
Two days after Easter Sunday, the president threatened Iran with annihilation. Days later, Trump dissed Pope Leo XIV as “WEAK on Crime” – on the same day he posted an inflammatory image depicting himself as Jesus on social media.
With the Trump administration trading barbs with the Vatican in what’s become the most contentious relationship between a secular leader and the papacy since medieval times, some suggest the moment could be a flashpoint for Catholic conservatives torn between political and religious allegiances.
“Conservative Catholics who have supported Trump may now feel the need to decide between him and the pope,” said Landon Schnabel, an associate professor of sociology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
The clash has escalated beyond mere president versus pontiff: Some of Trump’s Catholic allies, notably Vice President JD Vance, have entered the fray, while the nation’s Catholic bishops have rallied around the pope, the entire affair amplified via social media.
“It’s almost like you can see this debate play out between two titans in real time,” said Frank Lacopo, an assistant professor of history at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. “This is unprecedented in American history.”
Nearly 60% of Catholics backed Trump in the 2024 election, but Mathew Schmalz, founding editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism, said up to a third of that support may have since withered as the president and the pope have clashed over U.S. deportation policies and the Iran war. The spat threatens to scuttle a key constituency heading into the 2026 midterms.
“Obviously Catholics in America are an important political constituency and regardless of whether they’re Republican or Democrat, presidents have been careful not to alienate them,” he said. “Trump is really charting out new political territory.”
Nicholas Hayes-Mota, a social ethicist and public theologian at Santa Clara University in California, said the cumulative effects of the last two weeks, capped by Trump’s since-deleted AI image on Truth Social, has already pushed some to break with the president.
“For some it’s clearly a bridge too far,” Hayes-Mota said.
Though the president dubiously attempted to explain it away, the Trump-as-Jesus image drew sharp rebuke from conservative Catholics such as podcaster Michael Knowles, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly and CatholicVote.org, a group founded by Trump’s Ambassador to the Holy See.
Schnabel, of Cornell, said for many religious Americans, faith leads while politics follows. In other words, their beliefs and values shape their political positions.
But when the president posts an image of himself as Christ, he said, “he asks believers to start with political loyalty and backfill the theology.” That creates tension between religious conviction and political allegiance.
“When people hold two conflicting commitments,” Schnabel said, “something has to give.”
A pope-president clash for the ages
While Washington and the Vatican have sparred over policy before, the ongoing back-and-forth has been uniquely public and personal.
“You’d have to go back to the Middle Ages or the Protestant Reformation to see this kind of dispute between the pope and a secular leader,” said Schmalz, a professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
For instance, in the 11th century, a dispute erupted between Pope Gregory VII and King Henry IV over who had the right to select bishops – the pope or the king. A similar battle, Lacopo said, flared up in 1303 between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV of France over taxation authority, eventually leading to violence.
“Some of the king’s goons went to the pope’s residence and beat him up,” he said.
In modern times, conflicts between the pope and U.S. presidents have proven tamer and less direct in comparison, largely limited to criticism of American war activities. In 1965, Pope Paul VI famously addressed the United Nations and implored, “No more war, never again war!”
“He refrained from naming names, but a lot of observers took it as being directed at Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War,” Lacopo said.
A 2015 article in America magazine recalled Time correspondent Wilton Wynne’s account of a tense meeting between President Johnson and Pope Paul in December 1968 as the war dragged on, with Wynne saying the pope “slammed his hand on the desk” and “shouted” at the president. But the meeting ended with the two men exchanging Christmas gifts.
Hayes-Mota, of Santa Clara, said the pope is obligated to speak on behalf of the church and its mission. Pope John Paul II, he noted, was actively critical of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq under President George Bush, “so it’s not as if Leo is going out on a limb. But I can’t recall a president ever attacking a pope in this way.”
Stephen Schneck, former director of the Institute of Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., said both Johnson and Bush were “deferential and diplomatic” in their engagement with the pope, “so those president-pope tiffs were ho-hum compared with what we’ve seen this last week.”
Trump has been anything but subtle in his remarks about Pope Leo, a Chicagoan who became the first North American pope when he was selected to succeed Pope Francis in May 2025 and has been vocal in his opposition to the Iran war.
In his April 12 Truth Social post, Trump called the pope not just weak on crime but “terrible for Foreign Policy,” adding that “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”
The pope responded by saying he had “no fear of the Trump administration” and would continue to preach the Catholic Gospel.
The president’s belittling of the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics once again drew criticism from prominent Catholic conservatives. Kelsey Reinhardt, president and CEO of CatholicVote.org, said “President Trump’s post insulting Pope Leo crossed, again, a line of decorum that plays an important part in diplomacy.”
Such attacks, Hayes-Mota said, won’t help Trump among Catholic voters, nor will attempts to politicize the pope’s articulation of the church’s moral values.
“His attack treated the pope as just another political opponent,” Hayes-Mota said. “The pope is very popular among Catholics in the U.S. and worldwide. If Trump really wants to make this a contest, I don’t think it will go well for him.”
Vance ‘could be a bridge builder’
Political observers say the person who may be most affected by the imbroglio is JD Vance, who has made faith part of his political persona. A Catholic convert who describes himself as deeply religious, Vance “will be called to account,” Schmalz said, with his upcoming memoir – “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith” – set to publish in June.
“Vance has positioned himself in a way that he will have to respond to questions about religious faith and how it relates to policy positions,” Schmalz said. “He needs to be very careful about the way in which he responds and not to echo the kinds of criticisms that Trump has directed against the pope.”
This week, the vice president joined the rumble by publicly quarreling with Pope Leo’s April 10 assertion on X that those who follow Christ are “never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
Addressing a Turning Point USA rally audience in Georgia on April 14, Vance said Leo’s position would have meant opposing the American liberation of France and concentration camps during World War II. He suggested the pope “be careful when talking about matters of theology.”
The next day, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops rushed to Pope Leo’s defense with a statement emphasizing that the Catholic Church’s centuries-old tradition of just war theory teaches that nations “can only legitimately take up the sword” in self-defense after peace efforts have failed.
“To be a just war, it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said,” the group’s statement said, continuing: “When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology. He is preaching the Gospel.”
Some noted that Vance’s statement about the church’s just war doctrine, rooted in the teachings of St. Augustine, came as Pope Leo XIV – who for 12 years presided over the global religious order instituted by St. Augustine – visited the North African site where the ancient Roman city of Hippo once stood under Augustine’s governance as bishop.
“For a lot of people that came across as hubristic,” Hayes-Mota said of Vance’s remarks. “It was not a good look for the vice president. For many Catholics, war is a morally urgent issue.”
As a Catholic and the second-highest ranking person in the administration, Hayes-Mota said Vance could help foster the kind of deescalation and dialogue that some Catholic conservatives have called for.
“He could be a bridge builder, but his initial reactions haven’t conveyed that,” he said.
Will Trump tone down his religious posturing?
Schmalz emphasized that the Catholic Right isn’t monolithic. Some hardcore MAGA supporters, he said, have welcomed Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo “because they perceive him as a liberal… There is a hardcore Catholic MAGA constituency that really does believe that Donald Trump has been chosen by God in this historical moment.”
On the other hand, he said, conservative podcasters and influencers may be more cautious about how they frame their support of the administration going forward.
While observers say it might behoove Trump to tone down his religious grandstanding, the president has proved he’s unpredictable. Days after the backlash to his controversial AI image post, Trump reshared another image that showed him being embraced by Jesus and wrote, “God might be playing his Trump card!”
“If he doesn’t want a disaster, Trump absolutely needs to tone down his religious posturing,” said Schneck, the former Catholic University institute director. “He’s already got the hard-core Evangelical right in his pocket. Why continue to antagonize mainstream Catholics and religious moderates?”
While he thinks it would be “political malpractice” for Vance and other Trump administration Catholics like Marco Rubio and Karoline Leavitt to continue to double-down on such messaging, Schneck said the president has shown a knack for being able to squirm out of tricky political positions.
“Trump’s secret sauce is his uncanny ability to erase current outrage by shifting attention to some new spectacle,” he said. “Expect this to be his formula for winning back much of the Catholic right before the midterms.”
