Has Trump's feud with Pope Leo crossed a line with Catholics? — Global News Podcast

[0:00] Welcome to the Global News podcast from the BBC. I'm Charlotte Gallagher and today we're joined [0:05] by our religion editor Aleem McBoole. And Aleem, we're continuing to see strong reaction from [0:11] across the world about President Trump's comments about Pope Leo. [0:15] Yes, so we're seeing reaction on a couple of things. On that tirade, first on social media [0:21] and then in person he gave an interview on camera. He said he wasn't a fan of Pope Leo. [0:27] He took credit for Pope Leo being elected at all, saying if it wasn't for him then Pope Leo [0:33] wouldn't have been elected. And it came from a place of responding really to what he saw as [0:41] criticism from Pope Leo over recent weeks about the war in Iran. And then later in the day also [0:48] posted this image, an AI-generated image, that a lot of people presumed was him trying to depict [0:56] himself as a messiah, as Jesus. [0:59] President Trump said, I was depicting myself as a doctor. [1:02] I was interested though that he thought enough about the backlash that he did ultimately remove [1:09] the post and felt like he needed to make that justification because, you know, during the [1:14] conclave last year he posted an AI-generated image of him as the Pope and that's still up there. [1:20] What he didn't do is what a lot of Catholics were calling for, which is apologise to Pope [1:26] Leo for the social media post and his verbal attack on Pope Leo. He hasn't done that, even [1:34] though there are some allies of his who are Catholics who've called for him to do that. [1:39] Particularly strong comments from Georgia Maloney, the Italian Prime Minister as well. [1:43] This is what she said, I express my solidarity with Pope Leo after Trump's comments. I won't [1:49] feel comfortable living in a society where religious leaders do what political leaders [1:54] tell them to do. [1:55] Yes, so when we talk about Catholics who have traditionally stood alongside Donald Trump, [2:04] Georgia Maloney was one of those in the past. She has found other reasons to be critical of [2:09] Donald Trump in recent months. But one of the world leaders who has come out very strongly [2:15] in opposition to the, not necessarily just the post and the attack on Pope Leo, but she [2:24] had also raised issues about whether the war in Iran was just or not with President Trump. [2:31] Has he crossed a red line then with Catholic voters in the US, do you think? [2:35] It's really interesting. Certainly the last 24 hours or so has crystallized feeling that [2:41] was already growing. Criticism from Catholic leaders is not unusual for President Trump, [2:49] particularly on issues like immigration and the US treatment of migrants. He's planning to [2:56] deport. He's received lots of condemnation in the past from the Pope, not directly. The Pope [3:03] has talked about policies rather than the man himself. But the Catholic community in the US is [3:09] notoriously quite split politically. Yes, you can look at it along race lines. Latino Catholics, [3:20] Hispanic Catholics tend to lean Democrats and white Catholics tend to lean Republican. And certainly [3:28] that's how it was in the 2024 election. But there is big division on big issues, on abortion, on [3:37] immigration. There are big divides between left and right. What has been really interesting to me [3:44] is speaking to people on the right, conservative Catholics who had very much sometimes being at odds [3:53] with the Catholic leadership in the US, which is quite left leaning. They had been very supportive [3:59] of President Trump. Certainly, they feel that a line has been crossed in the way in which [4:07] President Trump attacked Pope Leo and also with this AI post being generated. But actually, [4:16] it's crystallized feeling over the last four or five weeks, where there has been a sense among a lot of [4:24] American Catholics that they don't feel that the war in Iran was just. And Pope Leo there is a part of [4:33] this because he's been very clear in one direction. When, for example, President Trump talked about [4:41] a civilization dying in Iran. Over Easter. Over Easter. Pope Leo was very, very clear, calling it [4:49] truly unacceptable. And I spoke to a very prominent conservative Catholic commentator, Peter Wolfgang. [4:59] He's one of those Catholics who was sort of a pragmatist. He didn't like President Trump to begin with [5:05] in sort of 2016. But he looked at it in a pragmatic way because he's someone who wanted abortion laws to be [5:13] overturned. But he's since become a very enthusiastic supporter of President Trump. He has criticized even [5:22] Catholic hierarchy in the US over its opposition to President Trump's immigration policies, which he [5:29] supports. And what Peter Wolfgang said to me is, President Trump doesn't understand how Catholicism [5:37] works. The Pope isn't merely a head of state. He's the vicar of Christ. Attacks on him are received as a [5:45] tax on the church itself. And the more he attacks the Pope, the more his support will drop among his [5:52] Catholic voters. So that is somebody who thinks this is going to have a long term impact. [6:00] So it could potentially have an impact, I suppose, if this continues on the midterms, [6:04] if he continues to pick these fights? Potentially, like I say, when it comes to US Catholics on the [6:10] right, they still agree with President Trump on a lot of his policies. They still don't really have [6:15] an option, an alternative, really, if you are opposed to abortion, if you agree with those [6:22] sort of mass deportations or the immigration policies of the US administration. There's nowhere [6:27] else really for them to turn. So it could be that we see people staying away from the polls [6:32] in the midterm elections. But it's really difficult to say where this goes long term. But certainly, [6:42] in the short term, his standing has been damaged among American Catholics. As one Catholic bishop said [6:49] to me, a conservative Catholic bishop, Joseph Strickland, who's a bishop in Texas, was very pro-Trump. [6:57] I mean, he gave speeches at a rally in 2020 to say that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump. [7:05] He last year took part in a prayer ceremony where Mar-a-Lago was consecrated, for example. So a strong [7:12] ally of Donald Trump, he was so offended by what's happened in the last 24 hours. And also the way that [7:19] President Trump has sort of plowed ahead with his war, he said two things. He said, this is where [7:27] US Catholics need to realize, I think he might have been talking about himself a little bit as well, [7:32] that actually they shouldn't be following a national leader. They should follow God and follow Christ [7:37] and follow the Pope's teachings. But he also said that the last 24 hours meant that he felt a duty to [7:48] remind President Trump that in the Bible, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that all power on earth and in [7:59] heaven belongs to him. So a reminder that he's got the power. It's, you know, supreme power. It's not in the [8:07] hands of any man. [8:08] Thanks, Alim. That was the BBC's religion editor, Alim McBoole. And if you would like to hear more from the Global News [8:15] Podcast, please click the link below. Thanks for watching.