They\u2019re the ones who lecture religious leaders on what Jesus stood for<\/a>, demanding blessings for Trump\u2019s actions \u2014 or else.<\/p>\n Just check out the recent allegations in The Free Press<\/a> that senior defense officials dressed down the Vatican\u2019s ambassador to the U.S. in January over Pope Leo XIV\u2019s lack of enthusiasm for Trump\u2019s imperialist ambitions. Or Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, he of the tattoos hailing the blood thirst of the Crusades<\/a> (another Middle Eastern forever war that the \u201ccivilized\u201d side lost), who compared the rescue of a downed American aviator in Iran over Easter weekend to the resurrection of Jesus. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a playbook straight out of the Book of Revelations, which describes a Beast in the End Times with \u201ca mouth speaking great things and blasphemies\u201d in its quest to hold dominion over the earth. <\/p>\n In the other corner of this existential fight is an actual man of God: Pope Leo XIV.<\/p>\n Rather than cower before a despot who makes the Pharaoh in the Old Testament seem as stable and kind as St. Francis, the first American pope has resisted Trump like a protester at a \u201cNo Kings\u201d rally. He has yet to denounce by name anyone in the president\u2019s sordid orbit \u2014 but Pope Leo has returned to their actions again and again in his first year as head of the world\u2019s 1.4 billion Catholics.<\/p>\n He began his papacy by greeting a cheering crowd<\/a> with \u201cPeace be with you all\u201d \u2014 what Jesus told his disciples after his Resurrection and a brilliant, biblical way to telegraph where he stands in our bellicose times.<\/p>\n On Palm Sunday a few weeks ago, the pontiff proclaimed during Mass in St. Peter\u2019s Square that God \u201cdoes not listen to the prayers of those who wage war\u201d \u2014 a not-so-subtle rebuke to Hegseth, who prayed shortly after the U.S. launched the Iran war<\/a> for \u201cevery round [to] find its mark\u201d and for \u201coverwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n For his first Easter message, Pope Leo wrote, \u201cLet those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue!\u201d <\/p>\n Meanwhile, President Trump told a reporter that God supports the destruction he\u2019s inflicting on Iran because \u201cGod is good. God wants to see people taken care of.\u201d<\/p>\n Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks to reporters at the Pentagon, July 16, 2025, in Washington. <\/p>\n (Julia Demaree Nikhinson \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n According to the Free Press article, the Vatican declined an invitation from Vice President JD Vance for Pope Leo to visit the U.S., for fear that Trump would use him as a political pawn. Instead, the man born in Chicago as Robert Prevost<\/a> plans to spend July 4 \u2014 America\u2019s 250th birthday \u2014 on a Mediterranean island that has long served as a gateway<\/a> for migrants trying to make it to Europe.<\/p>\n Critics will accuse Pope Leo of Trump Derangement Syndrome and call him particularly short-sighted, since he stands athwart the desires of many American Catholics. <\/p>\n Though he isn\u2019t Catholic, Trump has favored Catholicism far above any other mainline Christian denomination, from acknowledging feast days to packing his administration and the Supreme Court with adherents in a way that even Joe Biden \u2014 a lifelong Catholic \u2014 never did. <\/p>\n About 55% of Catholics voted for Trump in 2024, per the Pew Research Center<\/a>. A survey last year by The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America<\/a> found \u201ca clear generational shift away from liberal self-identification\u201d among younger priests. Dioceses across the country are reporting the highest amount of converts in decades, many of them drawn in by orthodox Catholic influencers. <\/p>\n But Trump\u2019s embrace of Catholicism, like everything else in his life, has been conditional on fealty to him. His administration pulled tens of millions of federal funds from Catholic charities because they assisted migrants regardless of legal status \u2014 something the American Catholic church has done for over a century. Vance, himself a Catholic convert, accused bishops of being \u201cworried about their bottom line\u201d for daring to criticize the move and his boss\u2019 deportation Leviathan.<\/p>\n The Free Press also reported that Trump\u2019s lackeys invoked the Avignon Papacy \u2014 when 14th century French kings exiled a succession of popes from the Vatican and made them their puppets \u2014 during their browbeating of the Vatican ambassador.<\/p>\n Re-litigating history is an obsession of the Trump regime, so bringing up a medieval episode amounted to a threat to Leo to shape up \u2014 or else. <\/p>\n That\u2019s what makes Pope Leo\u2019s stance against a modern-day Babylon even braver. A pope\u2019s main role is to bear witness to the words of Christ, who said far more about taking care of the meek and turning the other cheek than he did about waging war.<\/p>\n The best popes, from John XXIII to John Paul II, know that their words stand as a challenge for all people, believers and not, to create a better world that paves the way for the world to come. Trump wages war for himself; Pope Leo urges us to stand for something other than ourselves. <\/p>\n At this point in his reign, Trump is a dead ringer for the Antichrist, described in the Second Book of Thessalonians as a \u201cman of sin … the son of perdition who opposeth and exalteth himself above all.\u201d <\/p>\n Pope Leo would never characterize his opposition to Trump in such apocalyptic terms, of course. But his stance against the president\u2019s tyranny is a call to action in the same vein as John Paul II\u2019s exhortation to the free world to oppose the Soviet empire. <\/p>\n \u201cLet us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power,\u201d Pope Leo stated on Easter, \u201cand implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil.\u201d<\/p>\n Amen, amen, amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A war for the soul of the world is happening right now that\u2019s straight out of the Bible…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":718220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[11030,298354,164244,298353,289644,15163,51,83,50,36008,5389,1807,52,277,1439,3419,131,103],"class_list":["post-718219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-action","tag-actual-man","tag-ambassador","tag-brave-stance","tag-free-press","tag-god","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-news","tag-peace","tag-pope-leo","tag-president-trump","tag-top-stories","tag-trump","tag-u-s","tag-vatican","tag-war","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116380745557118361","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Secretary](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775829139_911_.jpeg\")
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