FILE – Pope Leo XIV delivers his blessing as he visits Pavia’s Cathedral, northern Italy, on June 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File) Polls now show President Trump sinking deep into disapproval with voters outside his far-right base. In Fox polls he has 61 percent disapproval from voters. Trump is in negative territory on the war in Iran, on the economy, and on immigration.
There is a surprise political player in this moment of political decline for Trump: Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV.
With the midterms approaching, the first American pope’s defiant opposition to Trump is coming into view as contributing to Trump’s status as a flailing lame-duck.
Pope Leo is clear in saying Trump is out of step with Christianity’s core teachings: concern for the poor, skepticism of the rich, embrace of the refugees, and love for thy neighbor. These teachings are diametrically opposed to Trump starting war with Iran.
“God does not bless any conflict,” the pontiff wrote on X in April. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
Leo said he won’t be silenced on the already unpopular war. He doubled down by saying the conflict is driven by Trump’s “delusion of omnipotence.”
“I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do,” Leo said.
The pope is equally emphatic in opposition to Trump’s hard line on deporting immigrants with no criminal record. And he stands opposed to shooting people who protest against masked agents grabbing immigrants and locking them in harsh detention centers.
What would Jesus do? Not that.
While Trump slides in the polls, the pope has climbed to be the most popular leader among Americans with a 57 percent favorability, according to Gallup. The Economist-YouGov polling has the pope with a net favorability of plus 32 while Trump has a rating of negative 22.
Most Catholics, regardless of religious observance or demographic group, view Pope Leo favorably. That includes Catholics who regularly attend Mass and those who seldom or never do, according to Pew.
When asked about Trump’s approach to Pope Leo in a June survey by the Pew Research Center, far more Catholics say Trump has been too critical of Leo (51 percent) than say he hasn’t been critical enough (4 percent).
Trump’s response to the pontiff is to share offensive memes on social media suggesting he should be pope. He also falsely claimed that Pope Leo wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. That’s not true, Mr. President.
At 60 million people, about 20 percent of the U.S. population, Catholics make up the single largest religious group in the U.S. Six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are Catholic. Twenty-four of the 100 U.S. senators are Catholic, as are 150 members of the House of Representatives.
With Catholics making up 15 percent of Iowa’s population and 22 percent of Texas’ population, changes in their voting numbers could be enough to tip close gubernatorial and Senate races to Democratic candidates.
The uneasy alliance between evangelical Protestants and doctrinaire Catholics over abortion held the post-Nixon Republican electoral coalition together. It elected three Republican presidents: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump.
But with the Dobbs decision in 2022 ending nationwide, constitutional protection for abortion, Catholics and Evangelicals remembered just how much they disagreed on.
Vice President JD Vance is working to bring the two sides back together in advance of his likely run to succeed Trump as head of America’s populist right wing.
He has been on television, podcasts and social media promoting a book about his journey to Catholicism, while seeking the political embrace of Evangelicals.
If he runs for president he will have to answer tough questions about his support for Trump and indifference to the pope’s constant concern for the poor, the refugee, and rebuke of war.
Gerard Baker, in a column in The Wall Street Journal, notes that Vance’s faith journey risks being viewed as opportunism. Baker observes that Vance has gone from Christian evangelism to atheism and now to Catholicism. As a Catholic, Vance now has to face up to Christian imperatives on love, mercy and charity, Baker writes.
But in meeting with the pope, Baker writes, Vance “seemed to think it was fine to tell Pope Leo XIV that he needs to work harder on his theology … you have the sense that whenever his newly Catholic conscience is in conflict with his political priorities, it isn’t really a contest. Politics wins every time.”
The “stone in the gears” problem for Vance is that the pope’s unyielding view of Christian teachings line up with every social movement in American history — from women’s suffrage to civil rights and climate change.
Now, with U.S. politics focused on the high cost of daily life, the rising power of super-rich autocrats and the dominance of artificial intelligence there is a growing appetite for the pope’s old-school Catholic teachings.
That hunger is far greater than support for Trump’s new wing on the White House, his bumbling renovation of the reflecting pool or building a golden archway entrance to Washington.
Trump seems to have met his judgment day courtesy of the Chicago kid who became pope.
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”
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