Pope says he regrets remarks interpreted as debate with Trump

Pope Leo XIV moved to tamp down talk of a clash with President Donald Trump, saying he regretted that recent remarks had been taken as a rebuttal to the US leader and stressing that he had no desire to engage in a public dispute.

Speaking to journalists while travelling to Angola, the Pope pointed to a speech he delivered on Thursday in Cameroon — during the second leg of his African tour — in which he spoke of “tyrants” ransacking the world.

He said the text had been prepared well before Mr Trump’s “comment on myself and on the message of peace that I am promoting”.

“And yet it was perceived as if I were trying to start a new debate with the president, which doesn’t interest me at all,” the Pope said.

The pontiff had delivered the sharp warning on Thursday during a high-security visit to Bamenda, in northwestern Cameroon, the centre of a nearly decade-long separatist insurgency in the country’s English-speaking regions that has left thousands dead.

In the US media especially, the remarks were widely read as an allusion to Mr Trump.

But the Pope said the speech had been written before the US president’s criticism, adding that “there’s been a certain narrative that has not been accurate in all of its aspects”.

Mr Trump said on 12 April that he was “not a big fan of Pope Leo”, accusing him of “toying with a country (Iran) that wants a nuclear weapon”.

He later reinforced those remarks in comments to reporters and in a post on Truth Social, writing: “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for foreign policy,” the US leader said.