Pope Leo’s brave stance against Trump

There’s a war going on right now for the soul of the world, and it comes straight from the Bible, and I’m not just talking about the Middle East.

In one corner, we have President Trump and his minions insisting that everything they do is a divine command. They have consistently invoked a violent version of God as they deport undocumented immigrants, seek to make the United States whiter, tear up longstanding treaties with allies, drop bombs on would-be narcotics ships like the biblical plague, and strangle nations they view as threats or covet for their resources.

They are the people who lecture religious leaders about what Jesus stands for, seeking blessings for Trump’s actions—or otherwise.

Just check Latest allegations in the Free Press In January, senior defense officials met with Pope Benedict XIV. He said Leo dressed down the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States because of his reluctance to oppose Trump’s imperialist ambitions. Or, saluting the bloodlust of the Crusades (another forever Middle East war that the “civilized” side lost), tattooed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth likened the rescue of an American airman shot down in Iran over Easter weekend to the resurrection of Jesus.

It’s a playbook straight out of the Book of Revelation and describes an End-Time Beast “with a mouth that speaks great things and utters blasphemy” in his quest for domination over the world.

In the other corner of this existential struggle is a true man of God: Pope Leo XIV.

The first American pope portrayed the Old Testament Pharaoh in St. Instead of cowering before a despot who appeared as steady and gentle as Francis, he resisted Trump like a protester at a “No to Kings” rally. He has yet to accuse anyone in the president’s sordid orbit by name; but Pope Leo repeatedly returned to his actions in his first year as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

He began his pontificate by greeting the cheering crowd with the same words Jesus said to his disciples after his Resurrection, “Hail to you all,” a brilliant, biblical way of telegraphing where he stands in our times of war.

A few weeks ago on Palm Sunday, the pope declared during mass in St. Peter’s Square that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who make war”; It was a not-so-subtle rebuke to Hegseth, who prayed “every round” shortly after the US launched the Iran war. [to] to track down” and “overwhelming violence of action against those who do not deserve mercy.”

Pope Leo wrote in his first Easter message: “Let those who have the power to start wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but a peace imposed through dialogue!”

Meanwhile, President Trump told a reporter that he supports God’s destruction of Iran because “God is good. God wants to see people taken care of.”

According to the Free Press article, the Vatican rejected Vice President J.D. Vance’s invitation for Pope Leo to visit the United States out of fear that Trump would use him as a political pawn. Instead, the man born in Chicago as Robert Prevost plans to spend July 4, America’s 250th birthday, on a Mediterranean island that has long served as a gateway for immigrants trying to reach Europe.

Critics will accuse Pope Leo of Trump Derangement Syndrome and call him particularly narrow-minded for going against the desires of many American Catholics.

While Trump is not Catholic, he has favored Catholicism far more than other mainline Christian denominations, from adopting feast days to packing his administration and the Supreme Court with supporters in a way that even lifelong Catholic Joe Biden never did.

About 55 percent of Catholics voted for Trump in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center. A survey conducted last year The Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America found “a clear generational shift away from liberal self-definition” among younger priests. Dioceses across the country are reporting the highest number of converts in decades, many drawn by Orthodox Catholic influencers.

But Trump’s embrace of Catholicism, like everything else in his life, depended on devotion to it. His administration has withdrawn tens of millions in federal funds from Catholic charities for helping immigrants regardless of their legal status; This is something the American Catholic church has been doing for more than a century. Vance, himself a convert to Catholicism, accused the bishops of “worrying about the consequences” for daring to criticize the move and his boss’s expulsion of Leviathan.

The Free Press also reported that Trump’s henchmen, in intimidating the Vatican ambassador, appealed to the Avignon Papacy, where 14th-century French kings exiled a series of popes from the Vatican and made them their puppets.

Relitigating history is an obsession of the Trump regime, so bringing up an event from the Middle Ages was tantamount to a threat to Leo’s recovery—or else.

This is what makes Pope Leo’s stance against modern-day Babylon even more bold. The main role of a pope is to bear witness to the words of Jesus, who spoke less about waging war than about caring for the meek and turning the other cheek.

The best popes, from John XXIII to John Paul II, know that their words are a challenge to create a better world for all people, believers and non-believers, that will pave the way for the world to come. Trump is waging the war for himself; Pope Leo calls us to defend something other than ourselves.

At this point in his reign, Trump is the exact equivalent of the Antichrist, described in the Second Book of Thessalonians as “the man of sin…the son of hell who opposes himself and exalts himself above all.”

Pope Leo, of course, would never describe his opposition to Trump in such apocalyptic terms. However, his stance against the president’s tyranny, II. It is a call to action in line with John Paul’s exhortation to the free world to oppose the Soviet empire.

“Let us put aside all conflict, domination and desire for power, and pray to God to grant his peace to a world devastated by wars, marked by hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil,” Pope Leo said on Easter.

Amen, amen, amen.