President Donald Trump took aim at Pope Leo XIV again, suggesting that he was unaware of Iran’s repressive actions against its own people and building on his criticism of the Catholic pontiff.
“Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed, protesters in the last two months, and that for Iran to have a Nuclear Bomb is absolutely unacceptable,” Trump said in a Truth Social post just before midnight Tuesday.
As per CNBC, this comes after Trump lashed out against the pontiff on Sunday, saying that he did not want a pope who was critical of the U.S. president.
“I have no fear of the Trump administration,” Leo told reporters on Monday, “I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems.”
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Now, it looks like Vice President JD Vance is joining the fray with his warning to the Pope about theology.
As per NBC News, Vance said Tuesday that Pope Leo XIV should “be careful” when he talks about theology, rebuking the pontiff over his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy.
“Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps and liberated those, those innocent people, you know, those who had survived the Holocaust? I certainly think the answer is yes,” he said at a Turning Point USA event in Athens, Georgia.
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“Now we can, of course, have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just, but I think in the way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Vance said.
“But I think one of the issues here is that if you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth, and that’s one of the things that I try to do, and it’s certainly something I would expect from the clergy, whether they’re Catholic or Protestant,” he added.