A senior Vatican official shot down comments made by Donald Trump’s ambassador to the Holy See in the latest round of the president’s feud with the American-born pontiff.
Ambassador Brian Burch had dismissed Pope Leo XIV’s criticism of Trump’s war with Iran as the words of a political leader overseeing a small country, and not the gospel of a spiritual leader guiding 1.4 billion people across the globe.
“When the pope acts as the sovereign leader of the Holy See, he is coequal with world leaders,” said Burch, a longtime conservative Catholic activist, in an interview with The New York Times earlier this month.
That interpretation, however, was roundly rejected Monday by the Vatican’s editorial director, Andrea Tornielli.
“Even when he speaks about war and peace, migration, or how to remain human in the age of artificial intelligence, the Successor of Peter remains, above all, a spiritual leader,” Tornielli wrote in an op-ed for Vatican News.
The fact that Pope Leo is also the sovereign of the world’s smallest state “does not mean that he acts or speaks as a politician when addressing issues concerning the affairs of humanity,” he added.
Trump has been feuding with the pope—who was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois—for months over the pontiff’s criticism of his hardline immigration policy and foreign wars, including the administration’s attacks on Venezuela and Iran.
“In Iran, the criteria for a just war are not present,” Pope Leo told reporters last month.
His remarks came after Trump ranted against him on social media for supposedly being “WEAK on crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”
“Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a politician,” Trump wrote in April. “It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!”
Polling showed large majorities of Americans sided with the pope over Trump, but high-profile Catholics in the Trump administration—including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—have tied themselves in knots trying to defend the president’s policies against the Vatican’s teachings.
Speaking to the Times, Burch insisted the Vatican had not declared “definitively” whether Trump’s strikes against Iran were “a just or unjust war.”
Later, he acknowledged the pope had indeed explicitly called the war unjust, but suggested he didn’t really mean it.
“Keep in mind the ‘just war’ tradition for the Holy See does rely ultimately upon the prudential wisdom of the legitimately elected sovereign” of the country waging war, he insisted.
Tornielli’s op-ed did not name Burch or Trump, but it did reference the debate about a “just war,” as well as the pope’s calls for human life to be “respected and protected at every stage of its existence.”
When the pope speaks on those matters, he is “simply proclaiming the Gospel,” Tornielli wrote.
“Any glorification or exaggeration of the Pope’s role as head of state… is misleading because it comes at the expense of his one true mission as universal Shepherd,” he added.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Burch’s office for comment.
