After King David’s crimes against Bathsheba and her husband, the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to speak to him. Nathan began with a parable: a story of two men, one rich and one poor, the former rapacious and cruel and the latter his victim. As David was stirred to righteous anger, Nathan replied, in the famous rendering of the King James Version, “Thou art the man.”
That line came to mind as I read President Donald Trump’s weekend diatribe against Pope Leo XIV, which he soon followed with a post (later deleted) of an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus.
Plenty could be said of the details of Trump’s comments about the pope. But more important, I think, is the posture this pair of posts evinces toward the things of God. Even if Trump is right on every issue he invokes—crime, COVID-19 closures, Iran, Venezuela, and the stock market—he’s still grotesquely wrong to elevate himself to the level of Christ and claim for himself authority over Christ’s church.
The elevation in that image is not debatable. It’s not generic self-aggrandizement. It’s not a classic political cartoon. It’s not, as Trump implausibly claimed, “me as a doctor, making people better.”
Nor is it just one more Trumpian exaggeration, as longtime commentator Geraldo Rivera suggested, and therefore something we shouldn’t take seriously. Nor yet is it something we should take “seriously, but not literally,” as is so often true of Trump. It’s sacrilege, plain and simple. It’s blasphemy.
I don’t say that because I’m “offended,” in Rivera’s term. My feelings aren’t really relevant here. I say it because I have functioning eyes, and I can see what this image is intended to convey.
And in case there were any lingering doubts, the president’s message to the pope clears them right up.
Notice his phrase, over and over: “I don’t want a Pope who …” But where did he get the idea that his opinion would be relevant in the selection of a pope?
As an evangelical Protestant, I do not uphold the papacy. But Catholics are part of the body of Christ—“no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). And the purpose of a pope is not to please a president, nor should the perspective of a president have any bearing on picking a pope.
The pope is, fundamentally, a pastor, one of many shepherds of the flock. As a pastor, he is not immune to critique. But as with every pastor throughout the church, whether ministering in a backwoods chapel or in the Vatican, the person whose opinion matters is God.
In a brief statement responding to Trump’s post on Monday morning, the bishop leading the US Conference of Catholic Bishops observed that “Pope Leo is not [Trump’s] rival.” The president, I think, would agree. His post suggests he sees the pope not as a rival but as a subordinate, one more “world leader” who ought to bend to his own whims as the most powerful man on the planet. He says Leo should “focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician,” but his evaluation of Leo is entirely political.
Think again of that list of issues above: all politics. “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump began his post, talking about the pontiff in language straight out of an election attack ad. Even his claim that Leo was chosen to be pope only “because he was an American, and [the Catholic church] thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump” is classic Trumpian politics—he loves nothing more than taking credit for politicians he’s endorsed winning their races. All this makes perfect sense if Trump considers the pope as a politician, and one inferior to himself.
This brings me back to Nathan and David. When the prophet revealed the king’s guilt, David immediately confessed. “I have sinned against the Lord,” he said. And though his sins were forgiven, he did not escape consequences, because what he had done had “shown utter contempt for the Lord” (2 Sam. 12:13–14).
Though I’m generally aligned with the pope’s views of Trump’s war in Iran, I won’t put his recent comments, the statements that drew the president’s outrage, on par with Nathan’s message for David. Scripture unambiguously says Nathan was sent to David by God (v. 1), and I can’t assign the same authority to Leo.
But I will say that the president is dead wrong to position himself as the pope’s superior, whether implicitly with his words or explicitly in that blasphemous and pointedly timed image. And while taking down the Jesus image is a start, it’s not David’s swift and unqualified confession. Trump says he has “nothing to apologize for,” but I can think of at least two things: challenging the lordship of Christ and showing contempt for the things of God.
Bonnie Kristian is deputy editor at Christianity Today.
