Maryellen Lewicki meets once a week for Bible study with a group of Catholic women in Decatur, Georgia, in a space they try to keep clear of politics. But Donald Trump\u2019s name arises nonetheless.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have one person that we pray for during the course of the week,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat my friend said is that she prays for the president every day, that God will remove that hard heart of his and replace it with a softer one that has love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewicki attends St Thomas More in an affluent suburb of Atlanta. Most of the congregation at the Jesuit church and school are politically progressive, befitting the community around it. An image of Trump as Christ healing the sick, posted and withdrawn by Trump on his social media page this week, changes few minds about the president here.<\/p>\n
An age of political outrage has eroded Americans\u2019 capacity for shock. But the response by Trump and other Republican leaders and supporters to criticism from Pope Leo XIV<\/a> against the war in Iran has tested that proposition.<\/p>\n The pope has been broadly and consistently critical of war, but pointedly critical of the American attacks in Iran. On Palm Sunday, the pope, who is an American, condemned the use of religion to justify violence. God \u201cdoes not listen to the prayers of those who wage war\u201d, he said at mass in St Peter\u2019s Square.<\/p>\n His comments follow months of papal criticism about the treatment of refugees in the United States, and a statement<\/a> by American archbishops in February in opposition to the administration\u2019s actions on refugee and immigration policy \u2013 unusually forceful by the church\u2019s historic standards.<\/p>\n Mark Takano, a California Democratic representative, shows Donald Trump\u2019s Truth Social posts during a hearing in 2026. Photograph: Heather Diehl\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s comments in reaction to the Palm Sunday homily described Leo as \u201cweak on crime\u201d and suggested that Leo\u2019s papacy is due to Trump has been polarizing.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re an American, you don\u2019t want to see your president having a feud with the pope,\u201d said Taylor Marshall, an outspoken Catholic conservative with a considerable YouTube following. \u201cAnd if you\u2019re Catholic, it\u2019s kind of hard. If you voted for Trump three times and you want to be a Catholic and you want to be faithful and submit to the Holy Father, the bishop of Rome, the pope, the vicar of Christ, it\u2019s kind of a tough situation to see the leader of your nation feuding with the leader on Earth of the Catholic church. It is for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Marshall ascribed Trump\u2019s conduct this week to the president\u2019s fundamental difficulty processing the soft power of an American pope, and the challenge that poses to Trump\u2019s sense of self as the most powerful person in the world.<\/p>\n The pope \u201cis in charge of 1.4 billion \u2013 not million, billion \u2013 people and he has the nerve to interject his moral authority into the activity of President Trump? I really think that is the origin story. It\u2019s a philosophical conundrum that President Trump was never prepared for and I think he\u2019s still trying to figure out how to navigate it.\u201d<\/p>\n About 53 million Americans are Catholic, forming the largest Christian denomination in the United States, according to research<\/a> from the Pew center and others. About one in five voters is Catholic. Catholic voters have split their vote between the parties over the years, relative to other American Christians, with no presidential candidate earning as much as 60% of the Catholic vote in the last 50 years. A majority of Catholic voters have sided with the winner of the presidency in the last six contests.<\/p>\n Trump won 52% of the Catholic vote in 2016 and 55% in 2024, a 12-point margin over Kamala Harris. But 52% of Catholic voters chose Joe Biden, who became the second Catholic president in American history.<\/p>\n White Catholics and Hispanic Catholic voters diverge sharply in their voting patterns. White Catholics have steadily aligned themselves more frequently with Republicans over the last decade. So have Hispanic Catholics, but the shift has been less rapid. More than 60% of Hispanic Catholics vote with Democrats. About 40% of Catholics are Hispanic, according to Pew.<\/p>\n The papacy has grown more critical of American policy since the end of Benedict\u2019s leadership of the church, with Francis making the treatment of immigrants and refugees central to church teachings. And yet, about half of Catholics still chose to vote for Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the better part of the last hundred years, there have been Catholics at the heart of every conservative revolution that has kind of unfolded in this country,\u201d said Matthew J Cressler, a Catholic historian whose forthcoming book Catholics and the Making of MAGA: How an Immigrant Church Became America\u2019s Law and Order Faith is set to be published next year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that it was clear that Pope Francis stood on one side of certain justice issues that Trump was on the other side of didn\u2019t drive Catholics away from Trump, clearly,\u201d Cressler added.<\/p>\n The question is whether Trump\u2019s commentary may be the last straw for some.<\/p>\n