Why has US President Donald Trump fallen out with the Pope? — The Global Story

[0:00] What happens when an American pope takes on an American president? [0:04] Now, the most influential American in the world has almost always been the U.S. president. [0:09] But for the first time in history, maybe POTUS has a serious rival, Pope Leo XIV. [0:16] I have no fear. Neither the Trump administration nor speaking out loud about the message of the gospel. [0:23] And that's what I believe. I am called to do what the church is called to do. [0:28] Since his election last May, Pope Leo has increasingly become more vocal in his criticism of the Trump administration policies on things like immigration and foreign interventions in Venezuela and then Iran. [0:42] And in response, Donald Trump has taken it up a notch. In the last week, he erupted. [0:48] We don't like a pope that's going to say that it's OK to have a nuclear weapon. [0:53] We don't want a pope that says crime is OK in our cities. [0:56] I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of Pope Leo. [0:59] From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. [1:02] And I'm Asma Khalid. And welcome to The Global Story on YouTube. [1:09] In today's episode, we'll be speaking with the BBC's Ed Sturton, a man who knows his way around American politics and the Catholic Church. [1:19] But first, we're going to give you a quick recap. [1:21] Now, I'm sure that you all have seen some of the headlines of the beef between the pope and the president over the last several days. [1:27] The situation has been tense for some time on issues like immigration and deportation. [1:33] But it really started ratcheting up in January in the wake of the U.S. intervention in Venezuela. [1:40] Talking to diplomats in Rome, the pope said, [1:44] The diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force by either individuals or groups of allies. [1:55] War is back in vogue. [1:57] Now, in the wake of those comments, we know that there was a meeting at the Pentagon that took place with the Vatican's ambassador to Washington. [2:04] Recollections of that meeting vary. Some reports say that there were terse words exchanged. [2:09] The Pentagon dismissed reports as exaggerated and distorted. [2:13] And the Vatican said some accounts bared no resemblance to the truth. [2:16] Now, fast forward to March and CBS, which is the BBC's reporting partner in the United States, spoke with Pope Leo in Rome in the context of the Iran war, which had started by this point. [2:30] And the pope said to them, I'm praying for peace. [2:33] I hope that a ceasefire would be the most effective way to work together to find peace for all parties. [2:38] Then on March 25th, at a prayer service at the Pentagon, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy. [2:49] And then just four days later, off the back of that, in his Palm Sunday address, Pope Leo seemed to criticize the defense secretary. [2:57] He called for an end to, quote, a spiral of violence in the Middle East. [3:02] And he said to worshippers in Italian. [3:04] Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, who no one can use to justify war. [3:15] He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying, even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. [3:25] Your hands are full of blood. [3:27] Now, he didn't refer to Pete Hegseth by name, but it did seem to be an oblique reference to what Hegseth had previously said. [3:40] Then it is the big one. [3:41] On April 7th, President Trump threatened Iran with the death of its whole civilization, unless it agreed to end the war. [3:49] I'm sure we all remember that moment. [3:51] Pope Leo reacted by calling that statement from Trump truly unacceptable. [3:56] I would invite the citizens of all the countries involved to contact the authorities, political leaders, congressmen, to ask them, tell them to work for peace and to reject war always. [4:10] Then on Sunday, April 12th, Donald Trump posted two true social posts that got a lot of attention. [4:16] One was an image of him as a Jesus-like figure that he later took down from social media. [4:22] The second was a long one, blasting Pope Leo. [4:25] I'm going to read from it because there are a lot of wild things you see when you've covered the White House over the years. [4:31] This was particularly wild. [4:33] He begins by saying, Pope Leo is weak on crime and terrible on foreign policy. [4:39] Then he adds, I don't want a Pope who thinks it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. [4:44] He then followed that up with that now infamous line to reporters we've heard that he says he's not a big fan of Pope Leo. [4:50] Yes, and he said he likes crime, I guess. [4:53] Those posts really generated some outrage among Christians, among Catholics, including among some conservatives in the United States. [5:01] At this point, we're at the 13th of April, which is Monday of this week. [5:06] At this point, Pope Leo is on his way to Africa. [5:09] He's on a papal trip and he's asked by reporters on the on the plane. [5:13] We were noticing that a lot of interesting takes now seem to happen on the plane. [5:19] Leo said he had no fear of the Trump administration. [5:23] I have no fear of the Trump administration, nor speaking out loud about the message of the gospel. [5:29] Now, we're going to bring in our guest at this point, Ed Sturton, who's going to help us dissect all of this. [5:35] Ed has been with the BBC for a very long time reporting on U.S. and religious affairs. [5:42] Ed, the last the last time we spoke together was back in November. [5:46] We recorded an episode together about the pope and politics. [5:51] And you said something back in that episode that aged very well. [5:55] And I said something that aged very badly. [5:59] So I just want to call back to those two things. [6:01] So I said at the time, the pope has not exactly burst onto the world scene yet. [6:07] He's been very discreet. [6:09] And you said the two most powerful Americans in the world are heading for a confrontation, which sitting now in April seems particularly prescient. [6:23] Have we reached a moment of confrontation between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo? [6:29] Well, I think we have. [6:30] And actually, I think it's been there from quite early on in Donald Trump's time. [6:35] I mean, the pope or the Catholic Church generally, but the pope particularly, has taken on Donald Trump's agenda in all sorts of different ways. [6:42] You remember those very early cuts in aid that the Trump administration introduced? [6:48] Foreign aid cuts. [6:50] Exactly. Yeah. [6:51] And that was immediately seized on by the Vatican, which, of course, in many of the countries that were affected, is very powerful presence in terms of health care, education and so forth. [7:00] So they immediately picked up on that. [7:03] And even before he was elected pope, Leo was very hot on the question of the deportation and immigration policy of the administration. [7:12] And he had also taken on J.D. Vance on what sounds like a slightly technical question, I suppose. [7:20] The order amoris, the order of life. [7:23] You remember Vance suggested that one of the reasons for cutting aid is that you had a sort of graduated sense of those you cared about. [7:30] First your family, then your friends and all that, and moved gradually outwards. [7:35] And the bishop, Bishop Prevost, as he then was before he became pope, came straight back at that on social media and says, forget all that. [7:44] You've got it completely wrong. [7:46] Remember Jesus and his parable of the good Samaritan and the idea of loving your neighbour as yourself. [7:52] That's what matters. [7:53] So, you know, the record was there. [7:56] It doesn't, I have to say, surprise me that things have blown up in quite the way they have. [8:01] It does seem like initially the pope was very careful in his words. [8:05] He was diplomatic. [8:07] And what I was struck by it is that it seemed or it seems now over the last couple of days we're seeing a much more direct confrontation. [8:14] He explicitly said the pope that I have no fear of the Trump administration, singling out the president of the United States by name. [8:22] He is naturally a diplomat. [8:25] And it's interesting just to bear in mind the way he's led the church since he was elected, [8:30] which is very much in contrast to Pope Francis, who was a kind of iconoclast and used to burst out and say something wild and surprising and catch the headlines. [8:42] Leo is very similar in his ideas, but he's very different in his style. [8:47] So I suspect that's why you think of him as a more moderate figure in terms of his record. [8:54] I think what he's saying is pretty much what he said all along. [8:57] I mean, he talked about peace in his very first words as pope from the balcony of St. Peter's on the night of his election. [9:07] And what he's saying now is completely consistent with that and with the church's teaching, [9:13] which, you know, has been almost pacifist, really, since the mid-1960s and the Second Vatican Council. [9:21] Let's not forget that when Donald Trump invited him to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States, [9:29] he said, no, thank you very much. And he followed it up by saying that he was going to be on the island of Lampedusa, [9:36] which is, of course, you know, where lots of immigrants from Africa arrive after their journey across the Mediterranean. [9:43] Couldn't have been a clearer message about where his values lie. [9:48] On Monday evening, we also saw in this ongoing, what do I call it, beef, I guess, [9:55] between the president of the United States, the Trump administration, and the pope, [9:59] we saw the vice president, J.D. Vance, comment. [10:02] He is a Catholic himself, someone who previously met with the pope. [10:05] And he said that essentially it would be best for the Vatican to stick to cases of morality. [10:11] And, Ed, the criticism I have seen from some conservative Catholics in the United States [10:16] is that they seem particularly peeved that the pope was calling on people to contact their congressman. [10:24] Do popes do that? I mean, it did seem to me rather unusual for the pope to say, [10:29] contact your reps, shorthand here. [10:31] Yeah, it is unusual. But he also actually rang up personally the president of Israel, [10:37] President Herzog, and pleaded with him to stop the bombing. [10:42] You know, you can't distinguish between morality and politics in that very simple way, can you, [10:48] when it's an issue like war? I mean, war is itself a profoundly moral issue. [10:55] It seems to me that we're seeing two versions of Catholicism in the United States going head to head. [11:01] I'm interested in this moment, if we think about what's happening now, [11:06] in comparison to this moment, when John Paul II, a Polish pope, [11:11] spoke out against the Polish communist government who tried to suppress him. [11:15] Here we are seeing an American pope stand up to an American president. [11:19] Are there similarities between these moments? [11:21] Well, I think there are, because both are good examples of the way that the bully-puller puppet, [11:26] if you like, that the pope has, can work with unexpected power. [11:31] Stalin, of course, famously said, the pope, or how many divisions has the pope, [11:36] as a way of dismissing the role of the church in the world? [11:40] Then, some decades later, of course, along comes John Paul II. [11:44] And simply by delivering the message that he did, [11:48] he opened people's minds to the idea that communism wasn't inevitable [11:52] and that the Soviet hold over Central and Eastern Europe was not inevitable. [11:57] And many people see that as the beginning of the unravelling of the Soviet empire. [12:03] That was, turning to more recent events, [12:06] there used to be the view that the cardinals would never elect an American pope [12:11] precisely because America is so powerful. [12:14] And the theory was that you always need, you know, a balance. [12:17] How do we? [12:17] Exactly. But, of course, what's actually happened in this case [12:22] is that he's proved one of the most trenchant critics of the administration. [12:29] So, you know, there's nothing for him to lose in telling it like it is from his perspective. [12:36] Well, it's worth saying, I think, Ed, that popes get elected, [12:39] but they don't have to worry about being re-elected. [12:42] That is true. That is true. [12:44] They just have to worry about doing the job for a very, very long time. [12:48] And in his case, possibly a very long time because he's a very young man. [12:51] Yeah, they're on a different sort of time frame, aren't they? [12:54] Presidents of the United States and popes. [12:56] Yeah. Yeah, I think that there's a deeper point, actually, [13:00] which is that the church famously works in the Latin phrase [13:05] sub specie eternitatis. [13:07] Ooh. [13:08] Can you translate that? [13:09] I could. [13:10] With a view to eternity, with a sense of timeline that is eternal. [13:16] So you've got an institution which has existed for 2,000 years [13:21] and sees itself being there forever and, you know, [13:25] thinks in terms of centuries on the one side [13:28] and therefore speaking truths it believes it has learned through those centuries, [13:35] talking with somebody who's, you know, looking at the next day's headlines. [13:41] And that's, you know, that's a real mismatch for that. [13:43] We were just speaking about Pope John Paul II. [13:45] He was also outspoken about the war in Iraq in the early 2000s. [13:51] Can you tell us about that opposition and how similar or different that feels to this moment? [13:56] He was critical of both both Gulf campaigns. [14:00] I thought it was interesting during the second one, [14:03] the run up to George Bush Jr.'s war in Iraq, [14:06] that he referred back to his own experiences as a young man [14:11] of what it's like to be in a war, [14:13] because he, of course, grew up in Krakow in Poland [14:16] during the period of the German occupation. [14:19] So he has seen war and seen a particularly brutal face of war, [14:26] because, you know, he was, what, half an hour's drive from Auschwitz. [14:30] He'd seen it firsthand. [14:33] And that meant, I think, that he brought particular passion [14:36] to the question of war and peace. [14:41] Well, Ed, we're seeing a certain amount of religious rhetoric now [14:46] around the Iran war, [14:48] which reminded us of the language used around the Iraq war. [14:52] I mean, George W. Bush at the time used the word crusade, [14:55] which is, in many ways, a very controversial word. [14:59] But we're seeing similar sorts of things now, [15:01] if not the actual word crusade. [15:04] There were the things that Pete Hegseth, [15:06] the Secretary of War, the Secretary of Defense, [15:08] said around Easter weekend. [15:11] Shot down on a Friday, good Friday. [15:15] Hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday. [15:21] And rescued on Sunday. [15:24] Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday. [15:30] A pilot reborn. [15:31] What do you make of the religious way [15:35] in which this conflict is being framed? [15:37] I think some of it has been extraordinary. [15:40] In terms of the comparison with George W. Bush, [15:45] I think after he'd used that word crusade, [15:47] he was advised how sensitive it was. [15:51] Crusades were a time when Muslims and Christians [15:54] killed each other for their religion. [15:56] What do you make of Hegseth's words in comparison? [16:02] I think they are extreme. [16:04] And as we know, the Pope, or at least as we know, [16:07] he appears to have rebuked Hegseth pretty directly, [16:13] although he didn't use his name. [16:15] He essentially said, and I'm trying to get this quote right, [16:19] Jesus doesn't listen to the prayers of those who wage war. [16:23] And I think he also followed it up with a quotation, [16:26] an Old Testament quotation from Isaiah, [16:29] where he said something similar, [16:32] but he used the phrase, [16:33] those with blood on their hands, [16:36] which is a direct quote from Isaiah. [16:38] So he didn't say, you know, [16:39] I'm saying this to Pete Hegseth, [16:41] but it came on the back of the Hegseth romance [16:44] that you alluded to, [16:46] and it was pretty generally taken to be aimed at him. [16:49] Which, to be clear, Hegseth is not a Catholic. [16:51] I think that's a really important point, [16:53] because I think what you're seeing in his use of language [16:56] is a very distinctively American evangelical [17:00] kind of Christian nationalism, [17:02] which is completely unfamiliar in the Catholic world, [17:07] and which I suspect most Catholics, [17:09] even conservative Catholics, [17:11] would find quite difficult to deal with. [17:15] So evangelicals tend to be much more biblically rooted. [17:18] So all the stuff in the Old Testament about wars [17:23] and God smiting people, [17:26] you know, it's all fine. [17:28] Catholics tend to, [17:30] A, turn their attention much more to the New Testament, [17:33] but also regard the church as a teaching authority, [17:38] which has the ability to reinterpret all that stuff. [17:41] So you get a completely different picture, [17:46] particularly on an issue like war. [17:48] We've been having this conversation about Catholicism, [17:53] and we were speaking a moment ago about George W. Bush. [17:57] He was a man who was a born-again Christian, [18:00] who credits finding Christianity with saving his life. [18:04] Donald Trump's relationship with religion, [18:06] I will say, is far, far murkier. [18:08] Nonetheless, he's invoked Christianity and Christian imagery [18:11] in some really unusual ways. [18:14] Yes, he has. [18:15] I mean, he joked about becoming the next pope. [18:19] He posted an image of himself in papal clothing. [18:22] When he was asked what his favorite Bible verse was, [18:27] he sort of dodged the question. [18:30] And then this weekend, [18:32] he posted this AI image of himself, [18:35] depicted as a Jesus-like figure. [18:38] I thought it was me as a doctor [18:39] and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, [18:43] which we support. [18:44] What do you make, Ed, [18:45] of the way in which Trump and his administration [18:49] invoke religion in these ways? [18:52] Well, I think there's a long history of him seeking votes [18:55] from the religious right. [18:57] And, of course, things like the Supreme Court appointments [19:02] and the fact that they have led to a change [19:06] in the position of abortion in the United States [19:09] and the end of Roe versus Wade [19:11] has made a massive difference [19:14] to his standing among Christians generally [19:20] and helped to explain why so many of them [19:22] voted for him at the last election. [19:26] I think the fact that you mentioned the image of Donald Trump as Jesus, [19:32] the fact they withdrew that, I think, is probably significant. [19:36] Yeah, he doesn't usually delete posts. [19:38] That was an unusual move. [19:40] Yeah, yeah. [19:41] And, I mean, it was the most extraordinary picture, wasn't it? [19:45] I don't know what you felt, but it was quite something. [19:50] It was. [19:50] Traditionally, the American president has been [19:53] the undoubtedly most powerful American in the world. [20:00] And now that we have an American pope, [20:03] you know, it I think leaves a lot of us wondering, [20:06] well, who's really the most powerful American in the world? [20:09] I mean, as we're taping this conversation here, [20:11] we see the president of the United States [20:13] engaged in a war in the Middle East. [20:16] We see the pope on a tour of Africa, [20:18] both American men taking very different visions [20:22] of what American leadership means. [20:24] This whole episode is a reminder [20:26] that the Catholic Church and the office of the papacy [20:33] still has enormous resonance and power on the world stage. [20:41] He's got a hell of a megaphone, [20:44] and, you know, he's got a voice [20:46] that when he projects it makes a real difference. [20:52] And, you know, people, it was interesting, [20:54] you said earlier that he was quiet [20:56] at the beginning of time in office, [20:59] and he was. [21:00] It was as if he was working out what to do [21:02] and what sort of a pope he wanted to be. [21:05] But now he's sure of that. [21:07] He's incredibly self-confident, [21:09] and he's finding a real audience. [21:12] I don't think Donald Trump was ever lacking [21:16] in self-confidence, [21:18] and his voice is maybe a bit more quavering now. [21:22] Well, Ed, thank you so much for your time. [21:23] It's been a pleasure speaking with you. [21:25] Very nice to talk to you. [21:27] Thank you so much. [21:28] And can I thank you particularly, please, [21:29] for two Latin quotations [21:33] and one use of the word smiting. [21:35] That's it for The Global Story on YouTube. [21:40] Thanks, as always, for tuning in. [21:42] And if you liked what you saw today, [21:44] I should recommend our show, The Global Story. [21:46] It's also available as an audio podcast. [21:49] You can find us every weekday on bbc.com [21:52] or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.