‘I’m not a politician’: why the clash with Pope Leo could prove dangerous for Donald Trump

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Pope Leo XIV waving

Credit: Edgar Beltrán / The Pillar, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“I am not a politician; I speak of the Gospel.” Pope Leo XIV’s recent remarks, made during his apostolic journey to Africa, immediately suggest that his clash with Donald Trump operates on a different level to the US president’s usual political spats.

This is not the classic kind of confrontation that Trump has often had with foreign heads of state and government in the past, such as in recent months with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, whose refusal to fully back the US and Israel in their war against Iran attracted Trump’s ire. Rather, it is a clash rooted in fundamentally different moral and political visions: between a president who treats power in transactional terms and a pope who frames war, migration and human dignity as matters of moral principle.

When Cardinal Robert Prevost was named as Pope Leo in May 2025, Trump and his administration initially appeared to welcome the new pontiff warmly. In fact, in a post to his Truth Social platform the US president appeared to take credit for his election as pope, writing that Prevost “was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”.

But the war in the Middle East launched by the US and Israel has made the differences between their positions clearer – further heightening tensions between them. On Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, it became clear that Leo had decided to take a firm line against the war in Iran, saying that Jesus “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: your hands are full of blood’”.

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