{"id":434405,"date":"2026-04-14T08:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T08:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/434405\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T08:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T08:05:12","slug":"no-rest-for-jd-vance-as-trump-gets-cross-with-the-pope-again-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/434405\/","title":{"rendered":"No rest for JD Vance as Trump gets cross with the pope again \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hits just keep on coming for JD Vance<\/a>. Having left Islamabad after 20 undoubtedly gruelling hours of conversation with the Iranians<\/a> that left the US<\/a> delegation thwarted; having appeared last week at a rally for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orb\u00e1n in Budapest only to see his re-election campaign after 16 years of rule go down in such spectacular flames<\/a> that Vance\u2019s star-guest turn was touted as a cause of failure; having recently announced his summer book detailing his conversion to Catholicism, the US vice-president returned to Washington to discover his president had picked another fight. With the pope.<\/p>\n

Any hopes for a reflective Monday in the seclusion of the Naval Observatory, and maybe a cheat-night hour in front of the box with a spoon and a big tub of Tillamook, went astray. Instead, not for the first time, the Veep found himself suited up and under the camera lights as he stepped up to bat for his president. <\/p>\n

The president\u2019s social media activity is hyper at the best of times but his weekend tirade<\/a>, opening with the opinion that \u201cPope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy\u201d marked a new chapter in the uneasy relationship between church and state in America. A little later, Trump posted an AI image that circumnavigated the cybersphere \u2013 or at least its Catholic strongholds \u2013 with the same stunning impact as Artemis II had gone around the moon. It appeared to depict the US president in the image \u2013 and garb \u2013 of Christ. On Monday afternoon, Trump rejected that idea, telling reporters as he stood receiving a McDonald\u2019s delivery at the White House door (it was for staff, and was to promote the success of the administration\u2019s no-tax-on-tips policy) that the image was a tribute to medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor,\u201d said the president. \u201cAnd it had to do with the Red Cross \u2013 there\u2019s a Red Cross worker there which we support and only the fake news media could come up with that one.\u201d<\/p>\n

(The International Committee of the Red Cross may be so stunned by this interpretation that they have yet to officially point out that last November, they were forced to cut 3,000 jobs due to reduced funding from the United States and other top donor countries such as the UK and Germany).<\/p>\n

As an explanation, it was striking. It can\u2019t be said that president Trump looked like your typical doctor in the image, or at least not one from the 21st century, and if he was indeed a doc, he was one with an eye-catching celestial backdrop rather than the usual poster advising punters to cut the smokes and mind the cholesterol. The image was later removed<\/a> from the president\u2019s account. So, it wasn\u2019t just jet lag that had Vance looking a little battle-worn as he answered the questions of Brett Baier on Fox News on Monday evening.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, I think the president was posting a joke and he took it down because he recognised that a lot of people weren\u2019t understanding his humour in that case,\u201d said Vance. \u201cI think the president of the United States likes to mix it up on social media and I think that\u2019s one of the good things about him: he\u2019s not filtered … he doesn\u2019t send anything through a social media professional. The pope has been critical of our immigration policy but ultimately the policy is set by the president of the United States. We can respect the pope \u2013 we certainly have a good relationship with the Vatican.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DonaldDonald Trump taking delivery of an executive fast-food order at the White House on Monday. Photograph: AP Photo\/Alex Brandon <\/p>\n

In May of last year, the vice-president and the second lady, Usha Vance, met Pope Leo in the Vatican, shortly after his inaugural Mass. Just over six years had passed since Pope Francis had criticised president Trump\u2019s border wall by stating: \u201cThose who build walls will become prisoners of the walls they put up.\u201d The election of then cardinal Robert Prevost, a son of 1950s Chicago, gave Catholicism its first American pope and hinted at a more placatory message emanating from the Vatican. Not so. Pope Leo has been an outspoken critic of the administration\u2019s heavy-handed immigration tactics and of the war with Iran, and in brief comments yesterday he confirmed he had \u201cno fear\u201d of speaking out about the Trump administration if and when he felt it necessary.<\/p>\n

Trump, in a separate post, reminded his public that the result of the conclave was \u201ca shocking surprise\u201d and, in a roundabout way, all due to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wasn\u2019t on any list to be pope and was only put there by the church because he is an American and they thought he would be the best way to deal with president Donald J Trump. If I wasn\u2019t in the White House, Leo wouldn\u2019t be in the Vatican.\u201d<\/p>\n

That will remain unprovable. The conclave does not gossip. There are 53 million Catholics in the United States \u2013 and nothing like the same decline among young attendees as in Ireland. A recent New York Times piece on the resurgence of the Catholic faith among the young, by Elizabeth Dias, contained this observation on the returning youth:<\/p>\n

\u201cBishops are buzzing about the surge, and confounded by what is behind it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Of course we think the Holy Spirit is,\u2019 Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington said. \u2018But we are kind of stymied.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But could it be that the unshowy, understated \u2013 and very Chicagoan \u2013 charisma of the new pope has drawn some young Americans in?<\/p>\n

Over at the Jesuit Review, an opinion piece by Sam Sawyer urged readers to turn to cool reflection rather than give in to the temptation of instant outrage. He recalled that shortly after Pope Leo was announced, president Trump posted an image depicting himself in white cassock and mitre, offering a blessing. That \u201cjoke\u201d played well with Maga: it was still the Camelot era for the administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the America <\/b>team in Rome and back at home discussed how much to cover that story, I reminded my colleagues that to the degree that the Trump-as-pope meme meant anything, it meant that Mr Trump was unable to tolerate anyone other than himself commanding the world\u2019s attention,” Sawyer wrote before getting into the meat of his rebuttal.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps the way in which Pope Leo presents the greatest challenge to President Trump is in his consistent demonstration of what it looks like to remain morally centred on the Gospel instead of acting for or against Mr Trump\u2019s interests. In general, even when offering critiques that respond to American foreign policy moves, as in his description of Mr Trump\u2019s threat to destroy Iranian civilization as \u2018truly unacceptable\u2019, Pope Leo does not mention the president by name. In part, this follows well-established Vatican diplomatic practice, but it is also meant to remind us that the pope is speaking more from principle than he is in response to persons, even the most powerful person on earth. When Leo is speaking more explicitly about persons, it is to call our attention back to people who are suffering: the poor and the victims of war or violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The summer publication of Vance\u2019s book \u2013 with the somewhat Rothian title of Communion \u2013 will presumably mark the beginning of a 2028 presidential election bid to sketch out his credentials and his separateness from the two-term president who believes he has the power to make popes, and vice-presidents, like so many loaves and fishes, or even Big Macs and fries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hits just keep on coming for JD Vance. Having left Islamabad after 20 undoubtedly gruelling hours of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,2512,356,13,14,6,18929,45036,12175,11,12,15,16,5,2515,7,8,384,2517,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-434405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-catholic-church","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-iran","16":"tag-israel-iran-conflict","17":"tag-jd-vance","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-pope-leo-xiv","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-vatican","28":"tag-world","29":"tag-world-news","30":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116402030395713903","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}