Trump vs. the Pope

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**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:37)
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is The Daily.
An unusual disagreement has broken out between the President of the United States and the Pope. This week, after President Trump lashed out at him, Pope Leo XIV openly took on the administration, setting up the most direct confrontation between a head of state and the Pope in modern history. Today, my colleague Motoko Rich explains why Trump cares so much about what the Pope thinks and why it matters the two of the most powerful Americans in the world are so deeply at odds. It's Thursday, April 16th.
Motoko, you have just embarked with the Pope on this tour of several African countries. You are traveling on the papal plane with him, surrounded by top Vatican officials, at this really tense moment in which the American president is attacking the first American pope. So just set the scene for me. Where are you and what is the feeling right now among the papal entourage?

**Motoko Rich** (1:53)
Well, we're on the third day of Pope Leo's first trip as pope to Africa. We just came from Algeria and landed this afternoon in Cameroon. I'm currently in the capital of Cameroon in a hotel. You might hear a little background noise because I'm in the press center because that's where the best Wi-Fi is. Wow. The mood here, it's an interesting mix because of course, the people who are waiting for the pope's visit are super excited. Like when we were driving on the road from the airport to the hotel, we were just seeing tens of thousands of people lighting the road. So for them, this is an incredibly important pastoral visit. And yet, in the bubble of the papal plane, there's this great awareness of this huge rift that has opened up between the pope and the president of the United States due to some very public attacks by the president on social media and then following up by the vice president in various interviews. And this is a particularly stunning moment because this pope has during most of the first year of his papacy, been very mild-mannered and attempted to create a sense of unity.
He's not been confrontational. And yet, on Monday, we saw him kind of fight back.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:03)
Okay. Let's get into the whole story of this rift.
Walk us through how it started.

**Motoko Rich** (3:09)
So, from the moment that Pope Leo was elected, because he was the first pope from the United States, there was some expectation, is he going to be sort of the anti-Trump? Pope Francis' predecessor had been perceived as this more left-leaning pope. Right. He had famously gone up against Trump in a number of ways, in terms of calling him not Christian, going to the border of Mexico to meet with migrants. So there has been precedent for a rift between a previous pope and the president, but Pope Leo is really making an effort to kind of calm things down. So he would make very generalized comments speaking out against war, speaking on behalf of peace, speaking on protection for the environment. But then a sense that he might have some ideological differences with the president in the same way that Francis had started to creep in when he talked about migrants.
He encouraged the US. Council on Bishops when they condemned the president's migration policies.
And then as he has spoken out about war, it has been perceived by the Trump administration as more and more a direct attack. And certainly after the war began against Iran, the pope has increasingly been making more pointed comments.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (4:34)
What I hear you saying is that there was some latent tension bubbling in the background between the Pope and the Trump administration before this moment, but that the war sounds like it was a turning point. So how did that unfold?

**Motoko Rich** (4:48)
So soon after the war began, the Pope started making comments.

**Pope Leo XIV** (4:54)
Brothers and sisters, I'm praying. I'm falling with deep concern what's happening in the Middle East and Iran in these dramatic moments.