ROME — As Catholic cardinals prepare to choose a successor to Pope Francis, church leaders, politicians and pundits blasted President Donald Trump on Sunday for sharing an AI-generated image of himself on a throne in the cassock and miter of the pontiff.
“It’s sad both for the White House and for the president,” Cardinal Anders Arborelius, the bishop of Stockholm, told The Washington Post. “I mean, he makes themselves ridiculous, right?”
“This is an image that offends believers, insults institutions and shows that the leader of the global right enjoys being a clown,” former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi wrote in a social media post Saturday.
The pope is the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. The image, shared late Friday by both Trump and the White House, drew quick condemnation.
“There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President,” the New York State Catholic Conference said in a social media post. “We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.”
There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President. We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us. https://t.co/ortxbkDlT5
— NYS Catholic Conference (@NYSCatholicConf) May 3, 2025
The conference is the public policy voice of the state’s Catholic bishops, who include Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, who has long been friendly with Trump and delivered a prayer at his second inauguration.
“I hope he didn’t have anything to do with that,” Dolan said Sunday before celebrating Mass in Rome, according to the Catholic News Service. “It wasn’t good. The Italians say, ‘brutta figura,’” meaning it makes a “bad impression.”
“The Bible tells us, ‘Make no mistake: God is not mocked’ (Galatians 6:7),” wrote the Rev. Thomas Paprocki, the bishop of Springfield, Illinois. “The Pope is the Vicar of Christ. By publishing a picture of himself masquerading as the Pope, President Trump mocks God, the Catholic Church, and the Papacy….”
Not all Catholics agreed; among some, Trump is more popular than was Francis. New York Post columnist Charles Gasparino said he didn’t find the post offensive.
“Guaranteed most Catholics would say ‘No,’” he wrote on social media. “In fact they (we) probably respect Trump more than the socialist Pope.”
Trump and his supporters continue to rewrite norms in religious morality.
At his direction, high-level Cabinet members met last month to discuss rooting out “anti-Christian bias” in the federal government. The plan has sparked concerns among some members of Congress and religious-freedom advocates, who say it lacks evidence for its purpose.
“Everyone has the right to religious freedom, not just the select few who practice this administration’s preferred brand of Christianity,” the ACLU posted on social media.
Christians, who make up about 62 percent of the country, by far the largest faith group, are split on how Trump is doing his job, according to a new Pew Research poll: 51 percent disapprove; 48 approve. He enjoys strongest support among White evangelicals, the core of his base, at 72 percent. Fifty-eight percent of Catholics disapprove of Trump, while 42 percent approve. Support is much lower among Latino Catholics.
More than a third of Trump’s Cabinet appointees are Catholic. They include Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Vance, asked by anti-Trump conservative writer Bill Kristol about the post on social media, deflected.
“As a general rule, I’m fine with people telling jokes and not fine with people starting stupid wars that kill thousands of my countrymen.” Kristol advocated for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Some Church officials didn’t engage. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declined to comment Sunday. Asked about the Trump image during a Saturday news conference, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni twice refused comment. He politely, albeit awkwardly, smiled it away.
Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a historian of U.S. Catholicism at Notre Dame, said Trump’s post reflects the support and trust that Trump enjoys among millions of Catholics.
“It makes sense in Trumpworld. He has been empowered by Catholics,” she said. “This might be new levels of audacity and disrespect, but many American Catholics have ceded a great deal of power and moral authority to the current president. Whether that makes sense to others, it’s true.”
She noted that the post came at a time of uncertainty in the Church, with the seat of the pope vacant and some U.S. Catholics critical of Francis for his emphasis on mercy.
“So they trust Trump more than the pope. It’s mind-boggling but part of the reality.”
Cummings said the post marks the dramatic shift in U.S. history from a time just a half-century ago, when Catholic politicians had to emphasize that they would be loyal first to the United States, not the pope.
“It’s almost absurdist to get to this point so quickly,” she said. “Now [some Catholics] are insanely loyal to the president to the point that they think this is a great idea despite the clear disrespect.”
Italian social critic Marco Belpoliti, writing in La Repubblica, said, “We must recognize [that] the American President [has a] pathological megalomania, a form of innocence that goes beyond all the rules, conventions, and the necessary grace that the office he holds would require of him.”
Italian senator Enrico Borghi suggested an ulterior motive on Sky News: “That photo montage not only offends millions of faithful, but is also an attempt at very serious interference in the conclave that is about to open.”
