It is no surprise that Donald Trump has met his match in Pope Leo XIV. The US president represents the polar opposite of Christianity, exhibiting and celebrating the deadliest sins: cruelty, deceit, and avarice. In recent weeks, the pope has issued a string of barely coded denunciations of Trump, unfazed by the insults hurled back at him. It is no longer fanciful to imagine that what an eastern European pontiff, John Paul II, did by confronting the Soviet empire in the 1980s, an American-born pope may do in the 2020s by daring to speak truth to the would-be emperor in the White House.
A Global Challenger
Several heads of government have stood up to Trump. Canada's Mark Carney has done so most explicitly, while European counterparts have refused to join the president's reckless war on Iran. However, none has the global reach of the leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics. Carney has articulated the geopolitical case against Trump, exposing his destruction of the post-1945 order. Yet that does not capture the deeper objection. The antipathy lies not in policy but in morality, character, and human decency—the pope's terrain.
When Leo inveighs against war, he does not speak of strategic waterways or oil prices. Instead, he condemns "masters of war" whose hands are "full of blood," a world "ravaged by a handful of tyrants," and those who drag "that which is sacred into darkness and filth." JD Vance, defending Trump, earned worldwide derision for telling the pope to be more careful on "matters of theology." His demand that Leo "stick to matters of morality" revealed a misunderstanding: the revulsion toward Trump is moral.
Trump's Moral Failings
Since Abraham Lincoln, US presidents have summoned the "better angels of our nature." Trump appeals to the worst demons. In 2016, Hillary Clinton noted he paid no federal income tax; he replied, "That makes me smart." He cancelled a visit to a military cemetery in 2018, calling war dead "losers" and "suckers." He uses high office for personal gain, profiting at least $1.4 billion from the presidency, according to a New York Times analysis. His son-in-law solicits billions from Middle Eastern governments he negotiates with. Trump lies constantly—30,573 false statements in his first term, over 21 a day.
His cruelty is evident: threatening via social media that "a civilisation will die tonight," insulting the late Rob Reiner, and welcoming the death of Robert Mueller. He embodies the worst of us: greed, dishonesty, racism (admitting only three non-white refugees since October 2025), misogyny (friendship with Jeffrey Epstein), and stupidity (launching a war against Iran without strategic foresight). He is the polar opposite of Christianity, revering the rich, ignoring the poor, and treating faith as self-belief.
Two Conclusions
First, the conclave chose well in electing Leo, named after the "labour pope" Leo XIII. Second, the Trump presidency must be remembered as a terrible failure, a cautionary tale. Otherwise, the better angels of our nature will be dismissed as losers and suckers—and discarded forever.
