{"id":56230,"date":"2026-04-16T07:17:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T07:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/?p=56230"},"modified":"2026-04-16T07:17:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T07:17:18","slug":"2026-04-16-african-catholics-decry-trumps-spat-with-pope-leo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/2026\/04\/16\/2026-04-16-african-catholics-decry-trumps-spat-with-pope-leo\/","title":{"rendered":"African Catholics decry Trump\u2019s spat with Pope Leo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Africa tv video display -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3579572842\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\">\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">With his previous insults towards African countries and his gutting of foreign assistance, US President Donald Trump has offended the continent\u2019s Catholics more than once before, but his spat this week with Pope Leo has raised eyebrows nevertheless.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI was utterly shocked to read President Trump\u2019s remarks about the pope. Nowhere in modern history have we witnessed such verbal recklessness against an institution as revered as the papacy,\u201d said Blaise Bebey Abong, 38, a Cameroonian diplomat in Yaounde, where Leo arrived on Wednesday for the second stop of his four-country Africa tour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Since late March, Pope Leo, the first US-born leader of the Catholic Church, has been an outspoken critic of the war that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pope Leo warns peace threatened by &#039;whims of rich and powerful&#039;\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dspoI02P3ms?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Trump on Sunday called Pope Leo \u201cWEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy\u201d in a post on Truth Social. Trump also posted an AI-generated image of himself as a Jesus-like figure, drawing widespread criticism even from some religious conservatives who typically support him. The post was removed on Monday morning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Calling Trump\u2019s comments \u201cunthinkable\u201d, Abong said the pope represented \u201chigh moral authority\u201d even for non-Christians and that the dispute would damage the perception of Trump in the region, even among those who previously backed him.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"b-article-body__h3\">Disagreement over Iran war<\/h3>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Pope Leo told Reuters on Monday that he would keep speaking out about the war, and Trump reiterated his criticism on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Leo, flying from Algeria to Cameroon, did not respond to Trump directly, instead urging respect for all the peoples of the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Kwaku Amoah, who worships at Ghana\u2019s St. Peter\u2019s Cathedral Basilica, located in the city of Kumasi, said he understood why Leo would opt not to engage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cPublic insults are not the way to go,\u201d he said on Wednesday. \u201cThe Church often encourages responding to hostility with restraint rather than escalation, and I commend the pope for exercising restraint.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"In Africa, Pope Leo Retraces Footsteps of His Spiritual Father, St. Augustine | EWTN News Nightly\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_ErutUTKUws?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Trump seemed to take a different approach. On Wednesday he posted another apparently AI-generated image, this one showing a depiction of Jesus embracing him. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The original post had the caption: \u201cI was never a very religious man &#8230; but doesn\u2019t it seem, with all these satanic, demonic, child-sacrificing monsters being exposed &#8230; that God might be playing his Trump card!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Regardless of whether the dust-up continues, African Catholics have suggested it would colour their view of Trump for the long term.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThe church has endured emperors, revolutions, and ideological storms. It will endure this moment as well,\u201d Cardinal Stephen Brislin, the Archbishop of Johannesburg, wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Maverick. \u201cBut endurance is not the same as indifference.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\"><b>Reuters<\/b><\/p>\n<hr class=\"c-divider\"\/><\/div>\n<p><script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Africa tv video display -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3579572842\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\">\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n#African #Catholics #decry #Trumps #spat #Pope #Leo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With his previous insults towards African countries and his gutting of foreign assistance, US President Donald Trump has offended the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mzansi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56232,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56230\/revisions\/56232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}