U.S. President Donald Trump believes Pope Leo has ‘probably learned’ a lesson about politics after their feud over the Iran war.
Speaking with CBS News, Trump said he decided to lash out at the American-born Pope after seeing a 60 Minutes segment that showcased the pontiff’s disapproval of the Iran War and Trump’s immigration agenda.
‘He’s wrong on the issues,’ Trump said. ‘I don’t think he should be getting into politics. I think he probably learned that from this.’
Trump gave a blunt ‘no’ when asked if he had any plans to call Pope Leo and said he had ‘no idea’ if the pontiff would visit the United States while Trump is President.
‘It’s up to him, not up to me,’ Trump said.
The President continued to assert that the AI image was meant to be of him as a doctor, but said he was taken aback by the anger toward him from seemingly both sides of the aisle.
‘I viewed that as a picture of me being a doctor in fixing — you had the Red Cross right there, you had, you know, medical people surrounding me,’ he said.
‘And I was like the doctor, you know, as a little fun playing the doctor and making people better. So that’s what it was viewed as. That’s what most people thought.’
Trump also said he believed the image was made by ‘a very beautiful, talented artist’ before revealing what led him to delete it.
‘Normally I don’t like doing that, but I didn’t want to have anybody be confused. People were confused.’
The Pope said on Monday that he plans to continue speaking out against war, telling Reuters: ‘I don’t want to get into a debate with him.’
Speaking aboard the papal flight to Algiers, where Leo is starting a 10-day tour to four African countries, he added: ‘I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing.
‘I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialog and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems.
‘Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent people are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say there’s a better way.’
It comes amid a growing row between Trump and the head of the Catholic Church, who has in recent weeks condemned rhetoric coming out of the White House and called for peace in the Middle East.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump branded the pontiff ‘WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy’.
The President also claimed that Leo, 70, was only made Pope ‘because he was an American’, adding: ‘If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.’
He then sparked further controversy after posting an AI-generated image seemingly depicting himself as Jesus Christ, triggering backlash among his usual supporters and Catholics on social media before he deleted it.
