In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has waded ever deeper into a new “holy” war of his own making — this time against the Vatican. While it’s only a war of words, the backlash has been severe to the point where Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has issued the president a warning: “I would leave the Church alone.”
Trump’s conflict with the Holy See dates back to January, when Pentagon officials held a closed-door meeting with the then-ambassador from the Vatican, telling him, “America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.” An American official then reached for a medieval weapon and made a threatening reference to the Avignon Papacy, during which the French monarchy used military force to control the Pope.
When news of this incident came out three months later, it happened to be at a moment when the Pope was speaking out publicly against Trump’s war on Iran. During the Pope’s Palm Sunday homily, he declared that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” The following week during his Easter sermon, he said, “Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace. Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue. Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.”
Then the following Sunday, after some grumbling by Trump and other officials, the president posted a lengthy Truth Social rant in which he asserted that the Pope is “WEAK on crime” and “Weak on Nuclear Weapons,” possibly pro-drug dealer and pro-murder, and “catering to the Radical Left.” He then posed an AI-generated photo of himself as Jesus, which drew criticism from everyone from MAGA figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones, to the president’s everyday supporters, to the new Ayatollah of Iran.
While there has been no shortage of negative reactions from members of the Democratic Party, there has been little from the GOP, until Thune revealed his thinking on the matter.
“I would leave the Church alone,” is a simple statement, but there are big reasons behind it. In the 2024 election, Trump won among Catholics by 10-20 points, depending on the poll. Now with the GOP facing major losses in the upcoming midterm elections due to the unpopular conflict in the Middle East and wide-ranging economic strife, the last thing they want is a vital voting bloc alienated by a war of words against the Vatican.