Miami’s Archbishop Thomas Wenski has spoken out amid President Donald Trump’s feud with Pope Leo XIV over the war in Iran.
It comes as Trump has refused to apologize after launching a verbal attack on the first American pontiff on Sunday night.
“The pope doesn’t have to please anybody except the Lord,” Wenski told the Miami Herald on Monday. He said that some people “will be upset” and others “will applaud” what the pope says, but Leo is not seeking reactions either way.
Why It Matters
Trump sharply criticized the pope in a lengthy post on Truth Social while flying back to Washington from Florida on Sunday, in the latest and most personal escalation of the feud between two of the world’s most powerful figures. He doubled down when he landed, telling reporters that he’s “not a fan of Pope Leo.”
It came after Leo denounced a “delusion of omnipotence” that he says is fueling the United States and Israel’s war in Iran during an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday, and demanded leaders stop fighting and negotiate peace. He earlier said Trump’s threat to annihilate Iranian civilization was “truly unacceptable.”
Tensions between the Trump administration and the Vatican have been widely discussed over the past week after reports emerged of a hostile meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials in January. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense told Newsweek that reports of the meeting were “highly exaggerated and distorted.”
What To Know
In his remarks to the Herald, Wenski said that religious leaders should be “political but not partisan.”
He said Catholic leaders, including the pope and bishops, would “will upset people on the right sometimes, and they’ll upset people on the left sometimes.”
Wenski noted that it wasn’t the first time a pope had clashed with political leaders, citing the late Pope John Paul II, who had strongly opposed the Iraq War and made it known to then-President George W. Bush.
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has also responded to Trump’s attack on the pope, saying he was “disheartened that the president chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father.”
He added: “Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the pope a politician. He is the vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.”
Pope Leo told reporters on Monday that he is not afraid of the Trump administration, or “of speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do.” He stressed that he was not making a direct attack against Trump or anyone else with his general appeal for peace and criticisms of the Iran war and other conflicts around the world.
Asked if he owed Leo an apology, Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday: “No, I don’t. Because Pope Leo said things that are wrong.
“He was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran, and you cannot have a nuclear Iran,” he said, adding, “I think he’s very weak on crime and other things, so I’m not [going to apologize].”
Trump has also faced criticism for a now-deleted social media post containing an AI-generated image depicting him as Jesus Christ. On Monday, he said he had thought the image was of him as a doctor, a claim that has been met with skepticism.
“I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor and it had to do with the Red Cross,” Trump said.
“It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.”
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