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Catholics around Atlanta share mixed feelings on faith and politics as Trump engages in rhetorical war with pope
Alex Sullivan tended to his five children on the lawn after a traditional Latin mass at the Catholic Church of Saint Monica in Duluth, Georgia, and contemplated his faith in the light of God and the shadow of Donald Trump.
Sullivan, a self-described conservative who once staffed a libertarian state representative at the Georgia capitol, described his faith as almost medieval.
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© Composite: AP/Shutterstock
© Composite: AP/Shutterstock
© Composite: AP/Shutterstock
© Simone Risoluti/Vatican Media, via Reuters
Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a long supporter of Trump, says president’s feud with the pope is a ‘distraction’
A Republican lawmaker has condemned what he refers to as Donald Trump’s “holy war” against Pope Leo XIV.
Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a long supporter of Trump and the ultraconservative Maga movement, condemned the president’s attacks on the pope during a Fox News interview on Saturday.
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© Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
© Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
© Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
Trump appears to have crossed a line with his Christian supporters. Will it come back to bite him in the midterms?
Donald Trump’s depiction of himself as Jesus Christ and recent spat with Pope Leo XIV could come back to bite him and the Republican party in the midterm elections, according to experts, with some newly aggrieved Christian groups set to play an outsized role in key races across the US.
The president’s Trump-as-the-Messiah Truth Social post sparked immediate criticism among some Christians, including some on the right. Trump, 79, said he thought the AI image of him administering an ethereal light to a stricken man’s head as translucent figures descended from the heavens represented him as a doctor.
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© Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
© Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
© Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
The vice-president has endured his most humiliating – and damaging – week as his boss’s fall guy. How much more can Maga’s great hope take?
For a would-be president, JD Vance has an unfortunate habit of getting into fights he cannot win. Three losing battles in the past week – with Iranian negotiators, Hungarian voters and Pope Leo – brought censure, humiliation and mockery raining down on his head. None were of Vance’s choosing. All were fought vicariously on Donald Trump’s behalf.
The vice-president is paying a high price for sycophantic loyalty to his boss. His poll ratings are plunging. His Maga succession hopes falter. He suffers by association – although his own inflammatory statements and misjudgments often make matters worse. Yet amid growing doubts about Trump’s mental health and fitness to govern, Vance remains the White House’s next-in-line.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
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© Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
© Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
© Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Pontiff says that despite ‘certain narrative that has not been accurate’, he will continue to preach message of peace
Pope Leo XIV said on Saturday that it was “not in my interest at all” to debate the US president, Donald Trump, about the Iran war, but that he would continue preaching the Gospel message of peace.
Leo spoke to reporters aboard the papal plane flying from Cameroon to Angola as part of his 11-day tour of Africa.
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© Photograph: Luca Zennaro/Reuters
© Photograph: Luca Zennaro/Reuters
© Photograph: Luca Zennaro/Reuters
Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV polarizing the diverse community as faith and politics come to a head
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’s name arises nonetheless.
“We have one person that we pray for during the course of the week,” she said. “What 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.”
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© Composite: AP, Getty Images
© Composite: AP, Getty Images
© Composite: AP, Getty Images
The US president’s grudge match with the pope underlines how religion really functions in American politics
I’m not a particularly religious person, even though everyone tells me how cool believing in God is now. Every so often, we get a new trend piece about how rad and chill Christianity has become. All the skateboarders and chads are churchmaxxing. Only atheists wear skinny jeans any more. Christopher Hitchens would totally get mogged by Pat Robertson. Personally, I don’t buy it. Influencers like Logan Paul and IShowSpeed aren’t going on Twitch to tell their viewers to tithe 10% of their earnings to the Lord. They’re encouraging them to buy cases and cases of Prime Hydration Drink and watch WrestleMania.
In my research on the topic, I found this article from the Independent this year that claims that gen Z is, like, totally down with Christ and can’t wait to chug Mountain Dew with their local pastor in a musty basement. No sooner had I clicked the link than I found an editor’s note that the poll that supported the claim was found to be fraudulent.
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© Photograph: Patrick Meinhardt/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Patrick Meinhardt/AFP/Getty Images
© Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Worshippers made their way to the Japoma stadium in Douala to hear the pontiff speak on Friday
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© Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
Late-night hosts reacted to Trump’s plans for a triumphal arch, high gas prices and RFK Jr’s odd interest in roadkill
On Thursday night, late-night hosts weighed in on Donald Trump’s tense back and forth with the pope over the war in Iran, high gas prices and outlandish details from a new biography of Robert F Kennedy Jr.
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© Photograph: CBS
© Photograph: CBS
© Photograph: CBS
When it comes to theology, Donald Trump’s vice-president clearly knows best. Are we about to see an American break with Rome?
The battle to be the absolute worst Trump henchman can feel so closely fought. But in the end, it’s always JD Vance, isn’t it? You would say Stephen Miller, but Miller’s too hidden to qualify as a front-of-house henchman among the US president’s court of grotesques. Stephen’s clearly been judged so wantonly horrifying that the administration must keep him out of public view. If you enter the store, Miller is the only-for-the-initiated entity alluded to in a whisper by the oleaginous sales assistant. “We do have something in the back – off-the-books, as it were – if sir is after something a little more … specialist.”
But Vance? Vance besets us like the 11th plague – the plague of media appearances. For the next South Park season, I hope the creators give their brilliantly ghastly little vice-president avatar a papal mitre to wear. After all, here we have a man whose pick-me book on his journey to Catholicism has yet to even be published. That tome currently lies in the rectum of HarperCollins, ready to be excreted in June – yet inevitably, Vance is already giving menacing doctrinal advice to the pope as part of the multi-theatre fallout of Operation Epic Facepalm.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Reuters
© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Reuters
© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Reuters
These days, I’m feeling more aligned with Catholicism than I have since my first communion. I’m not alone in that
I’ve had my ups and downs with the church of my childhood.
On the one hand, as a “cradle Catholic”, I’ve received the sacraments, often get to Sunday mass, and am the product of a Catholic education, right through Georgetown University, with its Jesuit history. My father was a “daily communicant” – he received the Eucharist every morning before heading to his law office; his sister, my aunt, was a nun, a Sister of Charity with a PhD in classic languages.
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© Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
© Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
© Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
The president’s posting of an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus horrified many Christians. Sarah Posner tells Annie Kelly why evangelical voters still flock to him
Donald Trump’s late-night social media meltdowns are infamous. But even by his standards, last Sunday was particularly extreme. Throughout the night – up until 4am – the US president was busy on his Truth Social account.And squeezed in between posts on his new ballroom and Joe Biden was a bizarre attack on Pope Leo – God’s representative on Earth to 1.4 billion Catholics.
Clearly angry over the Pope’s criticism of his war in Iran, he called him weak on crime and terrible on foreign policy. Just 46 minutes later - the president posted an AI-generated picture of himself as Jesus basking in a holy glow.
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© Photograph: @realDonaldTrump/Reuters
© Photograph: @realDonaldTrump/Reuters
© Photograph: @realDonaldTrump/Reuters
Trump administration has riled head of Catholic church over use of theology to justify conflict in Iran
The contrast in experience between the two men disagreeing over war and theology was striking.
On the one side was Pope Leo XIV, the first North American to head the Catholic church and the first cleric from the Augustinian order, who this week visited the modern Algerian city where Saint Augustine once lived. For Leo, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine’s ideas, it was the culmination of a lifelong intellectual interest.
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© Photograph: Simone Risoluti/Reuters
© Photograph: Simone Risoluti/Reuters
© Photograph: Simone Risoluti/Reuters
© Patrick Meinhardt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
It’s a relief to see the pontiff decrying brutality, because it seems most current world leaders lack the necessary spine
I have never been a religious or spiritual person, even though I grew up in a religious area and had friends (and strangers) throughout school and university trying to lure me into whatever prayer disguised as organised fun they were up to. I did try it out shortly for a desperate period when I was young, attempting to pray to a God I didn’t really believe in to make me not gay, but blessedly he never answered.
Despite my resistance to organised religion, I have always had a soft spot for nuns and their counterparts. The girlies.
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© Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
Pontiff denounces leaders who invoke religion to justify war, after US bishops offer him support after Vance remarks
Pope Leo XIV has said that the world is being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants” who spend billions on war, in comments that will be seen as another sharp escalation in his almost week-long feud with the White House over the US-Israel war on Iran.
The first American-born pontiff did not mention Donald Trump by name, but used his speech in Cameroon on Thursday to denounce world leaders that invoke religion to justify violence against other nations.
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© Photograph: Andrew Medichini/AP
© Photograph: Andrew Medichini/AP
© Photograph: Andrew Medichini/AP
© Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
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