Has any prior pope ever called out a U.S. president for lying?
Has any prior president ever repeatedly, publicly falsely accused a pope of taking positions antithetical to Catholic teaching?
It would be hard to overstate how unheard-of this situation is. It’s hard just to fathom it.
At least four times in recent weeks, President Donald Trump has implied or outright stated that Pope Leo XIV approved of Iran having a nuclear weapon. “The pope made a statement. He says Iran can have a nuclear weapon,” he claimed in an April 16 exchange with a reporter. No such statement, needless to say, existed, and this false claim was immediately debunked both by Catholic sources and by a mainstream media outlets.
Yesterday, May 5th, Trump doubled down on his preposterous falsehood:
The Pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think that’s very good. I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people, but I guess, if it’s up to the Pope, OK. He thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
This outrageous lie1 elicited a jaded dismissal from Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who downplayed the possibility of Pope Leo himself responding to this new provocation.
The Pope goes forward on his path, in the sense of preaching the Gospel, of preaching peace … Even in the face of these new attacks, I do not know whether the Pope will have the occasion to respond.… The Pope has already responded; I would not add anything.
Later the same day, though, Pope Leo did find time to respond—and his response is extraordinary. Against Trump’s false claim, he simply invoked the Church’s longstanding position against all nuclear weapons. He emphasized that, in opposing war and calling for peace, he was simply proclaiming the gospel of peace. And, in an unmistakable reference to the falsity of the charge of his position on Iran having a nuclear weapon, he called for anyone wanting to criticize his message to “do so truthfully” or “with the truth”:2
I have been speaking out ever since I was elected—and now we are close to the anniversary. I said “Peace be with you.” The Church’s mission is to preach the gospel, to preach peace. If anyone wishes to criticize me for proclaiming the gospel, let that person do so truthfully. For years, the Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt on that point. I simply hope to be heard for the sake of the Word of God. Thank you.
There’s no ambiguity here. No wiggle room here for Catholic Trump defenders like Bishop Robert Barron to claim that the pope and the president are not openly contradicting one another.
The Vatican News story makes the context clear: “Pope Leo XIV spoke briefly to reporters and responded to the latest critical remarks made about him by US President Donald Trump.” The article also notes that Leo’s comments about the Church’s opposition to all nuclear weapons were by way of “responding to President Trump’s claim that the Pope considers it acceptable for Iran to possess nuclear weapons, thereby placing all Catholics at risk.”
The reality is impossible to miss. The president doubled down on a lie about the pope’s stance on a critical issue—and the pope not only rejected this purported stance as antithetical to the Church’s established position, but also insisted that he was being criticized merely for “proclaiming the gospel” of peace, and not “truthfully.”
This is a clear escalation from just a few weeks ago, when the media was breathlessly hyping what was often billed as a “feud” between the pope and the president. If there was a “feud” in the past, it was markedly one-sided. Before now, Trump sporadically railed against the pope, in one notorious Truth Social rant wildly raving against Leo as “WEAK on Crime,” “terrible for Foreign Policy,” and “catering to the Radical Left.” But Pope Leo largely confined himself to speaking against both war in general and the Iran war particularly without acknowledging Trump’s attacks in any way. Pressed by a reporter, the pope said he had “no fear” of the Trump administration, and at a crucial moment he did denounce Trump’s genocidal threat to end “a whole civilization” as “truly unacceptable.” But the closest thing Leo made to a personal criticism of Trump himself, or to responding to Trump’s attacks against him, was a mischievous aside about the “ironic” name of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.
In his latest comments, Leo still has not so much as mentioned Trump’s name. Yet with the words “If anyone wishes to criticize me for proclaiming the gospel, let that person do so truthfully”3 Leo has at last clearly called out the fact that the U.S. president is lying about him.4
An increasingly clear choice
This is a bracing moment. Trump’s characteristic wrecking-ball approach—to truth, norms, institutions, democracy, human lives, and actual architecture—has for many made the last decade difficult, even traumatic. Countless people have shared with me the pain they have felt at seeing family members, friends, previously trusted leaders, and others rally in support of Trump, in many cases blithely ignoring or even cheering his heinous misbehavior. Loneliness in the U.S. and worldwide has reached epidemic proportions in the last couple of decades, but there is a particular loneliness experienced by opponents of Trump who feel isolated in their resistance to the man’s corrosive influence on U.S. culture generally, and on conservative and religious culture particularly.
Every pope of my adult life, notwithstanding their faults and mistakes, I have loved, and still love. Francis and Benedict XVI, no less than St. John Paul II, are saints in my eyes, though I’ve come to understand that saints are less different from the rest of us than we often imagine.
Over the last year, Pope Leo has offered something unexpected: He has made me and others feel less alone. Not that I personally have felt particularly alone! I’m surrounded by likeminded Catholic colleagues, and in the diversity of my parish and my diaconal cohort there are many who see things as I do. I feel deeply, on the other hand, for people I know or hear from who live in deep red areas where support for Trump is practically considered a fifth mark of the true church.
Pope Leo, with his fluent English and his closeness to the American reality, is a welcome sign that it is not so. Trump’s very attacks on the pope, though of course very bad for his soul and the souls of his loyal followers, in a certain way offer balm to the hearts of others, attesting that they are indeed in the right place.
A few weeks ago I was contacted by BBC News and asked to comment on the “feud” between the president and the pope. Among other things, I said that I was “grieved by the directness of Donald Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo,” but I also noted that “in a way I welcome the clarity of the choice Catholics are being presented with.” The clarity of that choice continues to grow.
P.S. Update
In a new twist, Trump has both doubled down again while also somewhat backing away from his false charge: In video posted by Christopher Hale (Letters from Leo — the American Pope & US Politics), Trump says that Leo “seemed to be saying that” Iran can have a nuclear weapon. This indicates that Trump knows Leo has rejected his lie and is hedging his bets somewhat while still being unwilling to disown the lie.
With thanks to Steven D. Greydanus, where this article originally appeared.
