Voters for US President Donald Trump are saying that Pope Leo is intruding on the president’s right to use military force against Iran, according to a report by NBC News.
Trump voters largely consist of Christian conservatives and “America First” voters who believe that the president should focus solely on the United States. In interviews with more than 20 Trump supporters, however, sentiment regarding Pope Leo’s political standings was undivided, according to NBC.
Jim Brizeno, a Catholic supporter attending Trump’s event in Las Vegas earlier this month, advised the pope to “stay in your lane!” and added that Trump was “within his rights to defend himself and defend his actions” against the pope’s rebuke, said the report.
Meanwhile, Christopher Brandlin, a Catholic Republican candidate from Nevada, alleged that the pope is “actually using more politics than he should.”
The US-Iran war has led to disagreements between Trump and Pope Leo over the proper way of handling global conflicts.
In March, the pope made a plea for an immediate ceasefire, lamenting “atrocious violence” and claiming that the war had killed thousands of non-combatants.
"In the name of Christians in the Middle East and of all women and men of goodwill, I appeal to those responsible for this conflict: Cease fire!" he said.
Later, he claimed that God rejects the prayers of leaders who start wars and have “hands full of blood.” "This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war," he told a large crowd in St. Peter's Square on Palm Sunday.
In a post to X/Twitter, the pope wrote that “God does not bless any conflict. 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.”
Trump responded to the pope’s claims in a post on Truth Social, saying that “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”
“I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t! I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” he continued.
Pope Leo attempted to downplay his feud with Trump, claiming that comments he made in the past were not aimed at the US president.
Following these remarks, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed, protesters in the last two months, and that for Iran to have a Nuclear Bomb is absolutely unacceptable.”
The war has tested Trump voters, according to NBC, who had agreed with past statements that the US needed to focus on domestic affairs.
Trump's stance on war shifted
In his inauguration speech in January 2025, Trump had said that he would measure success not by wars won, but by “wars we never get into.”
However, his political appeal has shifted as supporters have accepted his claims that the Iran war is necessary to prevent Tehran’s development of nuclear weapons.
Trump’s supporters have taken his side amidst his squabble with the pope, with many interviewees asserting that the pope was venturing into a “secular arena” that he shouldn’t be involved in, said the report.
Blake Marnell, an attendee at Trump’s rally at Dream City Church in Phoenix, said that when Leo “tries to make himself political, he goes into areas where he’s probably not in his wheelhouse.”
“Anyone can talk about politics, but if I were the pope, I wouldn’t be talking about it,” he added.
The church, however, has long been involved in such issues, according to NBC, and Pope Leo isn’t the first pope to do so.
Pope John Paul II opposed then-President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
John Carr, founder of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, claimed that “questions of war and peace have been the church’s lane for centuries.”
“They’ve been thinking about the use of violence since the invention of gunpowder,” he said.
Bishop Mariann Budde told NBC that “speaking about war, peace, and human dignity is squarely within the vocation of all religious leaders, because those are moral questions at the heart of the common good.”
“When a political leader answers that witness with insults,” she continued, “he is treating moral accountability like partisan combat, and that says far more about our politics than it does about the pope.”
Penny Visser, another attendee at Trump’s Phoenix event, claimed that “there were a lot of wars in the Bible and they were justified.”
'Stay out of our country's business'
“What gives the pope the right to say no on this one?” she asked. “What gives him the right to come into our country and say, ‘No, you can’t do this and this and this.’ He needs to stay out of our country’s business.”
“The pope is so full of crap,” said Marine Corps veteran Joshua Remmert after watching Trump’s rally in Phoenix.
“I know President Trump was blessed and given to us by God. So, yes, when he does something like go after Iran, I think it’s the right thing. I think God is on our side.”