A peace and religion targeted sermon delivered throughout Sunday mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City did little to clear the minds of some parishioners who walked out of church saying they remained distraught over the extraordinary conflict that erupted between Pope Leo and President Trump per week in the past.
Some Catholic supporters of the president mentioned they took subject with Trump’s fiery feedback about Pope Leo, the first American pontiff. In the 2024 presidential election, Catholic voters broke for President Donald Trump, with practically six in 10 voting to reelect the president, in keeping with a NCS exit ballot.
“I like Donald a lot, but he needs to calm down,” mentioned Lola Reese after attending Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s.
Reese mentioned rising up Catholic in New Orleans taught her the significance of the separation of church and state.
The president’s back-and-forth with the pope would possibly harm his relationship together with his supporters, she mentioned. She known as for the president to “back off and kind of calm down his little bitty, tiny streak of a little meanness here and there.”
Reese’s sentiment was shared by a number of churchgoers, together with those that mentioned they’d voted for the president however noticed his current feedback as out of line.
Anita Bauman, a Catholic Trump voter from Pennsylvania, mentioned the president’s feedback have been “colossally stupid.”
“I don’t think it helps the president at all,” she mentioned. Bauman mentioned she supported the president’s actions in Iran, the place, in early April, US-based rights group HRANA mentioned greater than 3,600 folks had been killed since a joint US-Israeli bombing marketing campaign started in February.
“I do think that things needed to be done in Iran,” she mentioned. “I think that regime was dangerous, but I don’t think picking a fight with the pope or trying to school the pope on theology is a good idea at all.”
The president’s unprecedented — and largely one-sided — battle with the Chicago-born Augustinian seemingly sparked final week, when Pope Leo mentioned he hoped the president would find an “off-ramp” to the US-Israeli warfare with Iran and known as the president’s rhetoric concerning the Iranian folks “truly unacceptable.” In a uncommon occasion within the historical past of the trendy Catholic Church, Pope Leo really referred to the sitting president by identify in at the very least certainly one of his remarks.
The president, who together with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has usually invoked God and Biblical metaphors to justify the warfare, responded forcefully on social media: “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” He added he doesn’t need a pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, who thinks it’s “terrible that America attacked Venezuela” or “who criticizes the President of the United States.” The pope has not mentioned he thought it was OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
Soon after, Trump additional infected some Christian supporters when he posted an AI-generated picture to Truth Social final Monday depicting himself as a Christ-like figure therapeutic a sick individual with American flags and eagles within the background.
By later within the afternoon, the put up was deleted. Trump claimed he thought the picture confirmed him as a health care provider.
Vice President JD Vance, who transformed to Catholicism in maturity, had his personal pointed phrases for Pope Leo. Speaking at a Turning Point USA occasion on Tuesday, he urged the pontiff to be “careful” when speaking about theology.
The chief of the Catholic Church has insisted he’s not interested in any feud with the president.
“It was looked at as if I was trying to debate again the president, which is not in my interest at all,” he mentioned Saturday on board the papal aircraft from Cameroon to Angola, a part of an 11-day trip to Africa.
“I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do,” he mentioned earlier.
Like his predecessor, Pope Francis, who was a vocal advocate for peace in Ukraine and Gaza, Pope Leo has extensively condemned warfare and criticized the US authorities’s remedy of migrants, which he known as “extremely disrespectful.” The pope hasn’t visited the US since his choice on the papal conclave in May 2025 and doesn’t have plans to go to this yr, in keeping with the Vatican.
Neither Pope Leo nor Pope Francis are the primary pontiffs to talk up about politics, together with US navy actions. Pope John Paul II was a vocal critic of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, calling all war a “defeat for humanity.”
Chase Lerew, a 24-year-old Georgia native who mentioned he transformed to Catholicism a number of weeks in the past, mentioned he discovered the president’s assaults on the pope “distressing.”
“We haven’t seen an authority figure trying to exert this much control on the papacy since the Avignon Papacy,” Lerew mentioned, referencing the end result of the 14th-century battle between the French monarchy and the papacy that noticed the French authorities exerting energy over a number of popes. “Seeing a lot of Catholics kind of bow down to a secular authority instead of a religious one has been disheartening.”
It’s not simply unusual churchgoers who’ve had sturdy reactions to the president’s feedback. Catholic leaders, too, have rallied behind the pope.
“I am disheartened that the president chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father,” mentioned Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the pope a politician.”
Some Catholic Democratic politicians have additionally condemned the president’s feedback, together with Sen. Mark Kelly, who known as the assaults “abhorrent” in a post on X.
For Mary Meehan, the president’s picture of himself as a Christ-like determine was each offensive to Catholics and considerably unsurprising.
“I think that our president does things off the cuff a lot.”
Meehan, who has spent 12 years attending providers at Our Lady of Mount Carmel-Annunciation Parish, a Roman Catholic church in Brooklyn, New York, mentioned she felt empathy for the president although she discovered the picture offensive.
As Catholics, “we all love God above all things,” she mentioned after the church’s Saturday night Mass. “And that’s hurtful to us when we see him doing that because we feel sorry for the president not realizing the pain he’s giving to all the people that love not only God but love him so much, too.”
During Monsignor David Cassato’s sermon on the church, he didn’t contact on the president’s feedback.
But Trump’s remarks have come up in some conversations with parishioners, Cassato mentioned.
“It’s a very strange time, in the world and in the world of politics,” he mentioned.
He prayed for the pontiff and president to succeed in an “understanding” — and says he believes each males in the end need peace.
The US is dwelling to round an estimated 50 million adult Catholics, in keeping with the Pew Research Center, making up round 20% of the entire inhabitants.
It’s an important voting bloc, which has more and more voted for Republicans prior to now few many years, in keeping with Ryan Burge, a political scientist who researches the affect of faith on American life. Common Republican insurance policies like restrictions on abortion and opposition to same-sex marriage have historically attracted Catholic voters to the social gathering, he mentioned.
Trump has usually sought to combine Christianity into his authorities, appointing an evangelical non secular adviser to steer a newly created White House faith office and creating by executive order a “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.”
The president’s battle with the pope “isn’t going to help” win over Catholic voters within the midterm elections, Burge mentioned.
He famous Pope Leo is extraordinarily widespread: Americans seen him most favorably of 14 worldwide public figures evaluated by Gallup in 2025. Archbishop Ronald Aldon Hicks echoed the sentiment, saying Sunday, “The majority of our Catholics, they are very happy with our pope.”
The president, alternatively, has confronted falling approval rankings, with approval rankings for his dealing with of the financial system falling to a new career low of 31% earlier this month, in keeping with a NCS ballot.
One Sunday churchgoer, Valerie Fodser, mentioned the feedback replicate “just who Trump is.”
“He just feels he can say and do what he wants, and we’ve seen that even with the war,” she mentioned. “He knows that people will push back against it, but he likes that pushback. He loves that pushback.”
Sabina Hitchen, who was visiting St. Patrick’s Cathedral from Chicago Sunday, mentioned she thinks the president ought to “stay in his lane.”
“The pope’s lane is leading us right as Christians,” she mentioned.
Hitchen mentioned she hopes the president “could focus his goals on leading the country.”
“I would say he could take some notes from the pope on kindness, taking care of our neighbors, and things like that.”