Pope Leo thumbed his nose at President Donald Trump on Monday by meeting up with one of his biggest enemies.
The pontiff’s opposition to the president’s populist form of right-wing politics has come into focus since his election last year, and his liaison with 32-year-old musician Bad Bunny in Madrid, Spain, only clarified it further.
No photos of the meeting have been released to the public. However, the Vatican has confirmed that a brief greeting took place during the Catholic leader’s official visit to Spain, the first in 15 years.
“I confirm it,” said Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesman. Bad Bunny “was with his family and some other people,” he added, having come to watch the pope’s address to Catholics, The New York Times reports.
He added that Leo “greeted them briefly before leaving the stadium,” backstage and privately. Both of the Americans speak Spanish.
The pope spoke at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, the home of Real Madrid, drawing a crowd of 80,000, The Washington Post reports.
Bad Bunny, given name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, who sings most of his songs in Spanish, is on the Iberian Peninsula as part of a sold-out 12-show stadium tour.
Both men have become enemies of Trump and his MAGA supporters. Both have been criticized for condemning his policies, while Bad Bunny became the front line of a culture war when he performed at the Super Bowl halftime show in February.
It infuriated Trump, who said it was “absolutely terrible, one of the worst EVER” and “an affront to the Greatness of America.”
He and his cronies then backed an alternative show from all-MAGA music bro Kid Rock, who has become so aligned with the movement that he has started hanging out on Apache helicopters with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Leo’s messaging stands diametrically opposed to the administration’s, which has cracked down on immigration and invoked nostalgia-driven appeals to so-called traditional American values.
“Today, the temptation to gain popularity by fanning the flames of polarisation seems to have grown rather than diminished, and human dignity continues to be violated,” Leo told the massed crowds in Spain.
Some of his previous messaging has barely concealed who it was aimed at.
“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo said in the city of Bamenda in Cameroon in April.
Hegseth has often invoked religious scripture and called on God during speeches and briefings about military action, even one time getting into a tangle and accidentally quoting a line from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, rather than The Bible.
In Cameroon, Leo also lamented those who “turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found.
“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters.”
Trump hit out too, although he opted to name his target directly, saying, “Leo should get his act together as pope.”
“Pope Leo is not afraid of showing himself in the company of people who are unusual actors in world politics,” Trinity College in Dublin theology professor Massimo Faggioli told the Financial Times. “He chooses to meet people who don’t represent institutions, but have taken a public position that is openly anti-Trump.”
“Trump has politicized everything,” Faggioli added. “That is why Pope Leo and his people have decided, ‘if this is the game that you want to play, we are going to meet with people that have become symbols against you and we don’t care that much if it looks political’.
“Message number one from the church today is don’t even try to distort the Christian message in an ethno-centrist nationalist way.”
