Trump taps into anti-Catholicism that's 'baked into' US political culture: historian

Catholics are by and large reacting very negatively to President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on Pope Leo XIV.

Despite denying reports that Trump officials tried to bully a Vatican representative several months ago, on Sunday the president posted a lengthy diatribe lambasting the Pope. Denouncing him as “Weak on Crime” and “Weak on Nuclear Weapons,” Trump included an AI-generated image of himself as a Jesus-like figure healing the sick with patriotic iconography in the background. He later claimed he thought the image showed him as a doctor and promoted the Red Cross before taking down the post entirely.

Trump is criticizing the Pope because Leo XIV, who was born in America as Robert Prevost, has urged him to treat immigrants more humanely and cease his unprovoked wars against Venezuela and Iran. In response to Trump’s recent posts, the Pope noted that the president did so on a social media platform he owns called Truth Social.

"It's ironic, the name of the site itself,” the Pope said. “Say no more.”

Speaking to AlterNet about Trump’s anti-Pope statements, Christendom College associate professor of history Dr. Christopher Shannon explained that he is participating in a larger history of U.S. anti-Catholic sentiment.

“Anti-Catholicism is baked into Anglo-American political culture,” Shannon told AlterNet. “During the Revolution, patriot leaders from [future president] John Adams to Thomas Paine repeatedly denounced British oppression in language drawn directly from earlier denunciations of the Catholic Church. For example, in Common Sense, Paine likened monarchy to ‘popery.’”

Shannon elaborated on how the so-called American Party thrived during the mid-19th Century on a platform of opposing mass immigration, especially from Catholics. Millard Fillmore, then a former president, won the second-highest vote ever accrued for a third-party candidate (22 percent) when he ran in the 1856 presidential election on an explicitly anti-Catholic ticket.

“Even up to 1960, [America’s first Catholic president John] Kennedy had to respond to a fear of a papal takeover of America were he to be elected,” Shannon pointed out. “Popes [e.g., Leo XIII (1878-1903)] sometimes had good things to say about America, yet no pope clearly endorsed modern democracy and religious pluralism, so the papacy was always suspect in the eyes of non-Catholic Americans. In 1965, the Second Vatican Council, under Pope Paul VI, issued a document that finally affirmed the legitimacy of democracy and religious pluralism. After that, tensions greatly decreased.” Yet even then, President Ronald Reagan aroused controversy from anti-Catholic groups when he appointed an ambassador to the Vatican City in 1984 — the first such diplomat in US history.

It is into this fraught context that Trump stepped when he attacked the Pope, a decision Shannon speculated was made because “Trump thinks [it] is about him. He thinks everything is about him.” He disagreed with Trump’s insinuation that Leo XIV owes his papacy to the idea that he would somehow be a pro-Trump pope.

“As far as Leo XIV, I suppose his status as an American had something to do with his election, but it is important to remember that he is as much the second Latin American pope (after Francis) as he is the first United States pope,” Shannon wrote. “Most of his episcopal career has been in Peru. He certainly had no public profile in the Church in the United States. He cannot be pigeon-holed into either of the ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ sides of the internal Catholic culture war. Though American by birth, he is perhaps the least American of bishops because he refuses to take sides in what, considering the global nature of the Catholic Church, is a very petty squabble.”

Given that Pope Leo XIV has a global rather than specifically American outlook to his papacy, American Trump supporters (including, as the president pointed out, the Pope’s big brother and Navy veteran Louis Prevost) now need to choose between their loyalty to basic Catholic principles and their loyalty to the president. Drawing from recent history to understand precedents, Shannon predicted they would do so by ignoring seeming contradictions between their religious and their political beliefs.

“John Paul II and Benedict XVI both spoke out against the second Iraq War [when they were popes], but American Catholics did not, as a unified people, follow their lead,” Shannon told AlterNet. “Conservative Catholics supported the war for conservative reasons, liberal Catholics opposed the war (mostly) for liberal reasons. I do not see the recent dust up between Trump and Leo changing this. Catholic Trump supporters will likely dismiss this as ‘Trump being Trump,’ and anti-Trump Catholics didn’t need any more reasons to oppose Trump.”

Landon Schnabel, an associate professor of sociology at Cornell University, argued that Trump’s attack against the Pope could fray the already-tenuous alliance between Christian evangelicals and Catholics.

“The Catholic-evangelical alliance that anchors the religious right was always more fragile than it appeared,” Schnabel said in a statement. “Catholics and evangelicals were adversaries for most of American history — John F. Kennedy had to reassure voters his pope wouldn't run the country. They eventually built a coalition around shared cultural traditionalism: abortion, family, sexuality, and religious authority in public life. That project held for four decades.”

Schnabel added, “But coalitions forged on one set of issues are vulnerable when new issues expose the theological differences underneath. The Iran war is doing exactly that. Defense Secretary Hegseth prays at the Pentagon for ‘overwhelming violence’ in the name of Jesus Christ and frames the war as divinely ordained. Pope Leo quotes Isaiah in response: God ‘does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.’ Two traditions that agreed on abortion have very different theologies of war. Conservative Catholics who have supported Trump may now feel the need to decide between him and the pope.”

Kim Haines-Eitzen, a Cornell professor of ancient Mediterranean religions and expert on early Christianity, had a scathing assessment of Trump’s AI image of himself as Christ.

“Throughout Christian history, there have been many who claimed to be Christ or claimed Christ’s divine authority,” Haines-Eitzen explained in a statement, citing infamous cult leaders like Sun Myung Moon, Jim Jones, Charles Manson and David Koresh of the Branch Davidians.

“The question now is whether Trump’s so-called Christian base will be willing to speak out against what has long been considered blasphemy throughout Christian history,” Haines-Eitzen added. “It is one thing for Christian preachers and leaders to encourage fellow Christians to live in Christ-like ways — giving to charity, caring for the poor, offering forgiveness. It is another thing for a president to present himself as Christ.”

Speaking to ABC 7 Chicago, a major regional news network from the Pope’s home (the Chicago metropolitan area), a pair of ordinary Catholics expressed dismay at Trump’s statements about the Pope.

“As a Christian and a Catholic, I've had enough,” said one man wearing a Chicago Cubs cap. (The Pope’s favorite baseball team are the Cubs’ crosstown rivals, the Chicago White Sox.) “I've just had enough. I've supported many things he's done. I'm actually in favor of what we're doing in Iran, but this country needs real leadership, and what we're getting now is an absolute disgrace. And Americans need to stand up because it's disgusting.”

Similarly a self-described Catholic parishioner said “I think it's deplorable that the President of the United States would take aim at our first American pope. And instead of working together and having an understanding, to attack is the wrong way to do it.”

Among Catholics in Long Island — which is home to 1.2 million baptized Catholics, one of the largest dioceses in the country, and is near Trump’s childhood home of Queens — there is similar disapproval. Bishop John Barres, head of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, said that his diocese joins "Pope Leo XIV in calling for peace, especially in the Middle East and in places where Christians are persecuted for their faith. We pray for and support our Holy Father in the mission of Christ's mercy and the proclamation of the Gospel—Blessed are the peacemakers."

Richard Koubek, a former public policy advocate at Catholic Charities on Long Island, told Newsday that "President Trump, who revels in the support of Christian nationalists, thinks Pope Leo is ‘too liberal.' That is quite ironic since Leo is simply proclaiming ancient Christian values that emphasize peace, care for the poor and marginalized. ... Does he think the Gospels are too liberal?"

A pro-Trump Catholic named Mike Ferrara said that while he agrees with Trump over the Pope on specific policy issues, he is unhappy with Trump’s disrespectful tone.

"I’m a Trump supporter,” Ferrara said. “I like Trump. But the way he talks about the pope, I’m not really thrilled about that. The pope is the leader of our church. As a Catholic, I don’t want to see the pope get attacked."

Regarding the AI image, Ferrara argued that "you don’t emulate Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ."

Trump’s attack on the Pope is also unpopular in Nashville, a Tennessee city with a large Catholic population and influential Catholic voices like right-wing commentators Michael Knowles and Candace Owens.

“I assumed someone has already told him, but it behooves the President both spiritually and politically to delete the picture, no matter the intent,” Knowles said on social media. Meanwhile Owens, reflecting on the rumored 2028 presidential ambitions of Trump’s Catholic vice president, posted on social media that Trump’s war with the Pope “will be consequential for JD Vance.”

Even in Italy, the nation where the Vatican is effectively located, the Italian prime minister disregarded the fact that both she and Trump are right-wingers to slam his attacks on Pope Leo XIV.

“I find President Trump’s remarks about the Holy Father unacceptable,” Meloni said in a statement. “The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and proper that he call for peace and condemn all forms of war.”

Italian politicians across that country’s political spectrum agreed with Meloni’s position.

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