EWTN News Staff Vatican reports that on April 12, 2026, President Donald Trump publicly attacked the usurper on Peter’s throne, Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a social media post, and telling reporters: “I don’t think he’s doing a very good job. … I am not a fan of Pope Leo,” adding: “He’s a very liberal person.” Trump accused Leo of being soft on Iran and criticized his opposition to U.S. military operations, writing: “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” and claimed credit for Leo’s election in May 2025, asserting: “He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American,” and “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, responded that he was “disheartened” by Trump’s attack, defending Leo as “the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and the care of souls.” Trump also posted an image commentators said depicted him as Jesus Christ, wearing a biblical-style robe and laying hands on a bedridden man as light emanated from his fingers. This spectacle of a secular ruler mocking a false pontiff, while the latter’s own defenders scramble to invoke titles that no longer correspond to any spiritual reality, lays bare the complete theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the post-conciliar edifice.
The Emperor and the Antipope: A Clash of Two Temporal Powers
The public confrontation between Donald Trump and the individual occupying the Vatican under the name Leo XIV is not a drama between the spiritual and the temporal powers. It is a squabble between two wholly temporal authorities, each claiming a legitimacy the other denies, neither possessing any supernatural mandate. Trump’s broadside — “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” — is the language of a Caesar evaluating a rival Caesar, not of a Catholic ruler assessing the Vicar of Christ. And Leo XIV’s appeals for peace, however superficially couched in religious language, are the utterances of a bureaucrat in a paramasonic structure, not the voice of the Fisherman.
Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), taught with crystalline clarity: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” And further: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” The reign of Christ the King is not a diplomatic opinion to be weighed against foreign policy objectives. It is the supreme law before which every knee must bend — omne flectatur genu — in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (Phil. 2:10). Trump’s complaint that Leo is “terrible for Foreign Policy” presupposes that the occupant of the Vatican should serve American geopolitical interests. This is precisely the error that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 27: “The sacred ministers of the Church and the Roman pontiff are to be absolutely excluded from every charge and dominion over temporal affairs” — not because the Church lacks authority over temporal matters in ordine ad finem supernaturalem, but because the modernist and secularist mind reduces all authority to the political plane, stripping it of every supernatural dimension.
The “Vicar of Christ” Who Speaks for the Gospel — But Which Gospel?
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley’s defense of Leo XIV is a masterpiece of conciliar equivocation. He declared: “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.” Let us examine this claim with the rigor it demands. The title “Vicar of Christ” (Vicarius Christi) is not an honorary decoration. It designates the successor of Peter, the holder of the Petrine munus, who possesses the charism of infallibility when speaking ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals (Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus). The question that Coakley refuses to ask — because the entire conciliar structure depends upon this silence — is whether Robert Prevost, elected in the conclave of 2025 under the rules established by the post-conciliar revolution, is in fact the legitimate successor of Peter.
The sedevacantist position, grounded in the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, holds that “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church” (De Romano Pontifice, II, 30). Bellarmine’s position is not a private opinion; it is the common teaching of the theologians, confirmed by Wernz and Vidal in Ius Canonicum: “By notorious and publicly manifested heresy, the Roman Pontiff, should he fall into it, is deprived ipso facto of his personal jurisdiction even before any declaratory sentence by the Church.” The post-conciliar occupants of the Vatican have taught, approved, and imposed doctrines condemned by the perennial Magisterium: religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae, condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus, Props. 15, 77-79), ecumenism (condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos), the novel conception of the Church as a “People of God” rather than a hierarchical society (condemned implicitly by every papal document from Mystici Corporis onward). Leo XIV is the heir and continuator of this apostasy. He did not fall into heresy by accident; he was formed, selected, and elevated by a system designed to perpetuate heresy.
Coakley’s invocation of “the truth of the Gospel” is therefore an empty incantation. Which Gospel? The Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God, who said “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6)? Or the gospel of the conciliar sect, which teaches that all religions are paths to salvation, that the Church of Christ subsists in a structure that has denied Her own divine constitution, and that the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has been replaced by a Protestantized memorial supper? St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the modernist proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Prop. 57) and that “contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism” (Prop. 65). The neo-church of which Leo XIV is the figurehead is precisely this “dogmaless Christianity.”
Trump’s Claim of Credit: The Naked Exposure of a Political Papacy
Perhaps the most revealing element of this entire episode is Trump’s boast: “He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” Whether or not this claim is factually accurate in its specifics, it exposes a truth that the conciliar structures desperately seek to conceal: the election of the antipopes has always been a political operation, not a supernatural act of the Holy Ghost. The conclave that elected Leo XIV was not a gathering of the successors of the Apostles guided by divine inspiration. It was a gathering of cardinals appointed by previous antipopes — Francis, Benedict XVI, John Paul II — each of whom was himself a product of the post-conciliar revolution. The entire chain of “apostolic succession” in the conciliar sect is tainted at its root by the manifest heresy of its originators.
Pius IX, in the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (1559), established the principle that “if at any time it shall appear that any Bishop… or even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his assumption to the cardinalate or the papacy, has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy: his promotion or elevation, even if it shall have been uncontested and by the unanimous assent of all the Cardinals, shall be null, void, and of no effect.” This is not merely a disciplinary norm; it is a declaration of the divine constitution of the Church. A manifestly heretic cardinal cannot validly elect a pope. A pope who has defected from the faith cannot validly appoint cardinals. The entire electoral apparatus of the conciliar sect is therefore canonically void — a fact that Trump’s boast, intended as a political taunt, inadvertently confirms.
The Image of Trump as Christ: Blasphemy as Political Theater
Trump’s posting of an image depicting himself as Jesus Christ, wearing a biblical-style robe and laying hands on a bedridden man as light emanated from his fingers, while eagles and military jets filled the sky above an American flag, is not merely tasteless. It is blasphemy — the usurpation of divine prerogatives by a mortal man. The Second Commandment forbids not only the worship of false gods but the making of “any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath” (Ex. 20:4) for the purpose of adoration. That Trump may have intended this as political satire or self-aggrandizement does not diminish its blasphemous character. It is the logical culmination of the cult of man that the conciliar sect has fostered for seven decades — the replacement of the worship of God with the worship of human power, human achievement, and human glory.
St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), identified the core of Modernism as the doctrine that “religion was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (condemned in Lamentabili, Prop. 20). When a president depicts himself as Christ, he has completed the modernist revolution: God is reduced to a projection of human power, and the human ruler becomes his own savior. This is not Christianity. It is the religio naturalis that Pius IX condemned — the replacement of revealed religion with the worship of man and the state.
The Silence About What Matters Most
Neither Trump nor Coakley nor Leo XIV has said a single word about the only question that truly matters: the salvation of souls. The entire exchange is conducted on the plane of temporal power — foreign policy, military operations, political influence. There is no mention of the state of grace, no mention of the necessity of the true Faith for salvation, no mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, no mention of the sacraments as the ordinary means of salvation, no mention of the reality of hell, no mention of the obligation of nations to submit to the reign of Christ the King.
This silence is the most damning indictment of the conciliar sect. The true Church, the Church of all centuries, the Church that produced the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council, the Church of St. Pius X and Pius XI and Pius XII (before his death in 1958), was a Church that spoke unceasingly of eternal truths. She taught that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12) — a truth that the conciliar sect has effectively denied through its ecumenism and its doctrine of religious liberty. She taught that the Holy Mass is the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, not a communal meal. She taught that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ, not a diplomat or a social activist.
Leo XIV’s appeals for peace, stripped of all supernatural content, are indistinguishable from the pronouncements of any secular humanitarian organization. Where is the call to conversion? Where is the warning of divine judgment? Where is the proclamation that true peace is only possible through the reign of Christ the King? Pius XI answered this definitively: “The peace of Christ is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ.” Without the conversion of individuals and nations to the Catholic Faith, without the reception of the sacraments, without the submission of every human authority to the divine law, there can be no peace — only the temporary absence of open conflict, which is not peace but a pause between wars.
The African Journey: Evangelization or Tourism?
The article notes that Leo XIV was preparing to depart for an 11-day trip to four African countries. One must ask: what is the purpose of this journey? The true missionary spirit of the Church, exemplified by the Holy Year of 1925 described by Pius XI, was the expansion of Christ’s Kingdom through the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the conversion of souls to the Catholic Faith. The conciliar “missions” are exercises in interreligious dialogue, humanitarian aid, and photo opportunities with local “religious leaders” — including schismatics, heretics, and pagans.
The Syllabus of Errors condemned the proposition that “man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Prop. 17) and that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church” (Prop. 18). Leo XIV’s African journey, conducted under the auspices of a sect that has embraced these very errors, cannot be an evangelization in the Catholic sense. It is a diplomatic tour dressed in religious vestments — a pilgrimage to the altar of the false god of “dialogue.”
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation Speaks, and Caesar Laughs
The spectacle of Donald Trump mocking Leo XIV, and of Coakley defending Leo XIV with empty titles, is a parable of our times. The abomination of desolation stands in the holy place (Matt. 24:15), and the Caesars of this world — whether in Washington, Moscow, or Beijing — recognize it for what it is: a temporal power dressed in stolen garments, devoid of supernatural authority, incapable of commanding the obedience of either the faithful or the powerful.
The true Church endures — not in the marble halls of the Vatican, not in the bureaucracies of the conciliar sect, not in the “Masses” celebrated with invalid rites by men whose ordinations are of doubtful validity — but in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic Faith, who receive the true sacraments from validly ordained priests, and who await the restoration of the Kingdom of Christ on earth. To them, this entire episode is a reminder of the words of Our Lord: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But you shall not be so” (Luke 22:25-26). Neither Trump nor Leo exercises any authority from God. One rules by the consent of a secular republic; the other occupies a throne vacated by heresy. Between them, the truth of Christ the King is crucified anew — and the faithful weep, not for the antipope, but for the scandal given to the weak and the confusion sown among those who still seek the narrow gate.
Adveniat regnum Tuum. Thy Kingdom come.
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Source:
Trump Blasts Pope Leo as ‘Weak’ and ‘Terrible for Foreign Policy’ (ncregister.com)
Date: 13.04.2026