A MAGA-friendly Catholic bishop has reiterated Trump’s main point of contention with Pope Leo XIV and called on the pontiff to speak out on the president’s policies.
“What I don’t want from the Church is a kind of demonization of the Trump administration,” Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota told Fox News Digital.
Barron, who serves on President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, said he wants Catholics on all sides to “talk” about “points of disagreement” such as the Iran war and immigration enforcement, but added that such discussions are “not always met with success, frankly, from the ecclesial side.”
The U.S. president has also repeatedly attacked the first American pontiff for his lack of support for some of the Trump administration’s actions.
In April, Trump posted a 334-word tirade on Truth Social attacking Leo for being “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” while also taking swipes at Catholic Church measures during COVID-19 and going so far as to claim the pontiff would not have been elected last year “if I wasn’t in the White House.”
In May, the president claimed that the pope is “endangering” Catholics by not speaking about nuclear weapons and not supporting his war in Iran.
In response, the pope said that “The mission of the Church is to preach the Gospel, to preach peace,” and though not directly mentioning the president, he added, “If anyone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the Gospel, let them do so truthfully.”
“The Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons for years, so there is no doubt about that,” the pope concluded.
The American pontiff has also spoken about the world “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants” and told reporters he doesn’t “fear” the Trump administration, among whose top officials, including Vice President JD Vance, are proud Catholics.
Though Bishop Barron had defended Pope Leo following Trump’s April Truth Social rant, calling the remarks “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful,” his interview with Fox News Digital suggests he nevertheless wants the pope to engage in the conversation around certain Trump administration policies.
Barron’s solution for what he called the “Trump-pope battle,” in which he admitted the “president was treating the pope too much as a politician,” was to have Catholic figures inside the Trump administration, including Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sit down for a “real conversation” with the Vatican.
Yet, Pope Leo has repeatedly invoked the Gospel to imply that some of the Trump administration’s policies are not in alignment with it.
Speaking about the harsh treatment of migrants, the pope cited a Bible passage, asking: “‘At the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?’”
Meanwhile, Barron told Fox News Digital that “we can’t simply fall for the simplistic view that an open border is humanitarian,” adding that it can cause “enormous moral problems.”
