{"id":592357,"date":"2026-04-18T20:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T20:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/592357\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T20:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T20:05:08","slug":"pope-leo-says-he-was-not-trying-to-debate-trump-over-us-attack-on-iran-pope-leo-xiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/592357\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo says he was not \u2018trying to debate\u2019 Trump over US attack on Iran | Pope Leo XIV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pope Leo XIV<\/a> said on Saturday that it was \u201cnot in my interest at all\u201d to debate the US president, Donald Trump<\/a>, about the Iran war, but that he would continue preaching the Gospel message of peace.<\/p>\n

Leo spoke to reporters aboard the papal plane flying from Cameroon to Angola as part of his 11-day tour of Africa.<\/p>\n

He addressed the spiraling back-and-forth saga of Trump\u2019s critiques of his peace message, which have dominated news headlines this week. But the American pope also sought to set the record straight, insisting that his preaching isn\u2019t directed at Trump, but reflects the broader Gospel message of peace.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a certain narrative that has not been accurate in all of its aspects, but because of the political situation created when, on the first day of the trip, the president of the United States made some comments about myself,\u201d he said, according to an official Vatican news agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of what has been written since then has been more commentary on commentary, trying to interpret what has been said,\u201d the pontiff added.<\/p>\n

Trump launched the criticism on his social media platform on Sunday, when he criticized Leo\u2019s preaching about peace as the war, which took to be criticism of the joint US.-Israeli attack on Iran, which killed civilians, including children, and was followed by Iran\u2019s retaliation.. Trump accused Leo of being \u201cweak on crime\u201d, possibly because of the pope\u2019s previous criticism of the president\u2019s crackdown on undocumented immigrants on the false premise that they are mostly criminals, and claimed that the first American pontiff owed his election to Trump.<\/p>\n

Later in the week, the president justified his attacks on the Catholic leader by claiming, falsely<\/a>, \u201cthe pope made a statement, he says: \u2018Iran can have a nuclear weapon\u2019\u201d. The pope has, in fact, spoken out against what he called<\/a> \u201cthe profound horrors wrought by nuclear weapons\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite Trump\u2019s effort to justify his attack on Iran as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, there is also no evidence that Iran has had an active nuclear weapons program since 2003, when it was suspended by a decree from the country\u2019s supreme leader. Trump\u2019s intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, testified to Congress last year that the US intelligence agencies \u201cassess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon\u201d. Iran has repeatedly asserted its right, under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to enrich uranium for peaceful, civilian purposes, including energy production.<\/p>\n

Leo has issued consistent calls for peace and dialogue, and has denounced the use of religious justification for war. Specifically, he called Trump\u2019s threat to annihilate Iranian civilization \u201ctruly unacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Vatican<\/a> has stressed that when Leo preaches about peace, he is referring to all wars ravaging the planet, not just the Iran conflict. The Russian Orthodox church, for example, has justified Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine as a \u201choly war\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s attacks on the pope have divided his Christian followers, with some expressing their disgust but others defending the president and claiming the Catholic church lost its moral authority when it turned a blind eye to sexual predator priests.<\/p>\n

Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and staunch Trump defender, even told viewers this week<\/a>: \u201cAs of today, I no longer consider myself a Catholic,\u201d citing \u201cinstitutionalized corruption\u201d and \u201cscandals\u201d that went, he said, \u201call the way to Rome\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Leo referred specifically to his remarks earlier this week at a peace meeting in Bamenda, Cameroon. The city is the epicenter of a separatist conflict that has been raging in the western, Anglophone region of the country for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

Leo also said that his remarks on Thursday, in which he condemned the \u201chandful of tyrants\u201d who were ravaging Earth with war and exploitation, were written \u201ctwo weeks ago, well before the person had ever commented on me and on the message of peace that I am promoting. And yet as it happens, it was viewed as if I was trying to debate again with the president, which is not in my interest at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pope Leo XIV said on Saturday that it was \u201cnot in my interest at all\u201d to debate the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-592357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}