Donald Trump wasn’t the first, and he likely won’t be the last.
The U.S. president’s simmering feud with Pope Leo XIV is just the latest in a millennia-spanning tradition of world leaders beefing with the head of the Catholic Church.
War in Iran joins the decline of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution as historic flashpoints that have triggered dust-ups between pontiffs and some of civilization’s most iconic political figures.
The latest clash has its origin in the Middle East conflict, and the pope’s repeated calls for peace. Leo XIV irked the president by declaring God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,” and deeming Trump’s threat to destroy “a whole civilization” to be “unacceptable.”
Trump hit back by saying the pope is “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” — and having members of his administration insist the conflict in the Middle East is a “just war” being waged “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
The spat between the pope and the president may be raising eyebrows, but it’s hardly a novelty for the Catholic Church. Indeed, Leo may be taking cues from papal predecessors who have spent the past 2,000 years sparring with chancellors and prime ministers, kings and emperors … and even a few literal barbarians.
The O.G. Leo
The first Pope Leo (440-461) is famous for having clashed with a figure who was undeniably feistier than Trump: Attila the Hun.
After pillaging his way across Europe, the barbarian leader entered Italy and sacked cities across the north of the peninsula. Rome, at the time under the nominal control of the weak Western Roman emperor, Valentinian III, seemed doomed to fall to the fearsome Hun’s hordes until Leo was dispatched to intercept him in 452.
Lacking armies to ward off the barbarians, the pontiff opted for dialogue — and the threat of divine retribution. According to the Greek historian Priscus, who once dined with Attila, the head Hun was so intimidated by Leo that he ordered his tribes to withdraw from Italy to Germany, where he died less than a year later.
Besting Napoleon
French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had a notoriously tumultuous relationship with the Catholic Church’s leadership.
While still an upstart general, he invaded Italy, swiftly defeated the troops guarding the Papal States, and declared the Roman Republic. After 80-year-old Pope Pius VI (1775-1799) objected to the provocative gesture, he was taken prisoner and deported to the French fortress city of Valence, where he died a few months later.
His successor, Pius VII (1800-1823), appears to have understood what happened to those who crossed the belligerent Corsican. Upon his election he immediately moved to negotiate a treaty that aimed to allow the Catholic Church to peacefully coexist with the French Republic. As an additional show of goodwill, he agreed to travel to Paris to be present at Napoleon’s coronation as emperor — and graciously held his tongue when the French leader provocatively crowned himself.
Relations soured, however, after the pope refused to back Napoleon’s continent-wide embargo on British goods. Like his predecessor, Pius was imprisoned. But as a much younger man he was able to wait out the emperor, whose political career came to a definitive end in 1815 at Waterloo. The pope made his triumphal reentry to Rome shortly afterward, hailed as a living martyr who had bested Napoleon.
Discreet diplomacy
Few popes have operated in a more globally consequential period than Pius XII (1939-1958), and few pontiffs have a more complex legacy.
Prior to his election he negotiated the 1933 treaty between the Vatican and Germany that gave Adolf Hitler’s emergent regime legitimacy, and obliged local clergy to remain silent as the Nazis began to persecute Jews and other minority groups in Germany. As pope, Pius XII was additionally criticized for his failures to denunciate Nazi atrocities.
His defenders, however, argue the pontiff opted for public restraint in order to carry out more discreet diplomatic efforts that saved thousands. After Fascist leader Benito Mussolini enacted racial laws to boot Jews from Italian universities, Pius XII appointed many of the unemployed scholars to posts at the Vatican. He also negotiated a deal with Brazil to take in Jewish refugees, and hid thousands in monasteries and convents across Rome.
At his death, Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Golda Meir hailed Pius XII as a “servant of peace” who had “raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and commiserate with the victims.” Despite that praise, the pope’s strategy of balancing public silence with private intervention — an approach still favored by the Vatican’s diplomatic apparatus — remains controversial.
Looking East
After watching the world come to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Pope Paul VI (1963-1978) embraced a policy of engagement known as Ostpolitik, which bet on dialogue with the Eastern Bloc.
Following decades firmly opposing the world’s communist governments, the pontiff welcomed Soviet leaders to the Vatican and dispatched emissaries to engage with authorities in Poland, Hungary and Romania. The strategy was controversial within the Catholic Church, but secured better conditions for its faithful behind the Iron Curtain.
The tactic was continued, albeit in a more confrontational style, by Pope John Paul II (1978-2005), who worked to forge ties with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev even as he lent moral support to Poland’s Solidarity movement.
Both efforts reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s global relevance — even in parts of the world officially committed to atheism.
Don’t build the wall
While dealing with Trump during his first term in the White House, Leo XIV’s immediate predecessor, Pope Francis (2013-2025), opted to attack the policies rather than the president.
Ahead of Trump’s 2017 inauguration, Francis declared “a person who thinks only about building walls … is not Christian.” But his spokesperson later insisted the pope’s comments were not meant to reference the U.S. leader or his plans to construct a giant barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border, and were instead a general observation.
That pattern was repeated throughout Francis’ papacy. The pontiff took firm positions against Trump’s policies — one example being his fervent defense of climate action as the U.S. pulled out of the Paris Agreement — but carefully avoided directly confronting the man in the White House.
An iconic photo of the two leaders serves as a visual metaphor for the strategy. In the image, Trump is seen grinning happily during a visit to the Vatican. The pope, meanwhile, stares ahead, grimly accepting the obligation to play nice with the president — if only for the sake of world peace.
