Trump refuses to apologize to Pope Leo, whom he calls ‘very weak’

Donald Trump has declined to apologise for attacking Pope Leo XIV, escalating an extraordinary public clash after the pontiff renewed his call for an end to the violence in the Iran war.

“There’s nothing to apologise for. He’s wrong,” Mr Trump told reporters, doubling down a day after a social media post and public remarks aimed at the US-born pope.

“Pope Leo said things that are wrong. He was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran, and you cannot have a nuclear Iran,” said Trump, who also argued that Leo was “very weak on crime and other things.”

Pope Leo XIV, for his part, said he has “no fear” of the Trump administration and made clear he intends to keep speaking out against war despite Mr Trump’s earlier direct criticism.

Speaking aboard a papal flight to Algiers this morning, as the first US pope began a 10-day trip to ‌four African countries, ⁠the pontiff said the Christian message was being “abused”.

He said: “I have no fear of neither the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel.

“We’re not politicians. We’re not looking to make foreign policy, as he [Trump] calls it, with the same perspective that he might understand it.”

“I don’t want to get into a debate with him,” Pope Leo 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 dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to ⁠problems,” he said.

“Too many people are ⁠suffering in the world today,” said Leo. “Too many innocent people are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say there’s a better ‌way.”

Watch: Pope Leo says he will continue to speak out against war

“Pope Leo is weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy,” Mr Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

Catholics on social media swiftly condemned Mr Trump for going after the head of the Church.

“There is no ambiguity about the situation now,” Massimo Faggioli, an expert on the papacy, said.

He likened the remarks to attempts by the leaders of Germany and Italy during World War II to pull the late Pope Pius XII behind their causes.

“Not even Hitler or Mussolini attacked the pope so directly and publicly,” said Mr Faggioli.

Archbishop Paul S Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, ‌said he was disheartened by Mr Trump’s comments.

“Pope Leo is ⁠not his rival; nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls,” he said in a statement.

Donald Trump said Pope Leo ‘should get his act together as Pope’

Leo, a Chicago native and the first US pope, has typically chosen his words carefully. But in recent weeks he has become an increasingly outspoken critic of the Iran war, denouncing the “madness of war” in a peace appeal on Saturday.

Last year, he raised doubts about whether the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies were in ‌line with the Church’s pro-life teachings.

“Someone who says, ‘I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States’, I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” the pontiff said in September.

Mr Trump wrote in his post yesterday ⁠that “Leo should get his act together as Pope”, and later told reporters he was “not a big fan” of the pontiff.

Mr Trump’s attack on Leo also accused him of ‌being “weak on nuclear weapons,” coming several days after the pope said the US president’s threat to destroy Iranian civilisation was “truly unacceptable”.

In a speech ⁠on Palm Sunday last ‌month in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, the pope said God rejects the prayers of leaders who start wars and have their “hands full of blood,” describing the conflict in Iran as “atrocious”.

Leo has also urged Mr Trump to find an “off-ramp” to end the conflict and “decrease the amount of violence”.

In his post, Mr Trump suggested Leo was elected to lead the Catholic Church last year “because he was ⁠an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”.

The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The pope’s appeal for a more compassionate approach to immigration – a view echoed by several of Leo’s predecessors – stands in stark contrast to Mr Trump’s position that the US must curb immigration from developing countries to reduce crime.

“He’s a very liberal person and he’s a man who doesn’t believe in stopping crime,” Mr Trump told reporters last night.

Mr Trump also had a rocky relationship with Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, who criticised Mr Trump’s immigration policy proposals during his first presidential campaign and ‌suggested Mr Trump was “not a Christian”.

Mr Trump had called Francis “disgraceful” in early 2016.