The relationship between Pope Leo XIV and President Trump, which began on notably warm terms when the pontiff was elected in May 2025, has grown more complicated in recent weeks as Leo has spoken out with increasing frequency against the ongoing military campaign in Iran.
Paul Kengor, editor of The American Spectator and author of the just-released book American Pontiff: Pope Leo XIV and His Plan to Heal the Church, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to assess where that relationship stands and what conservatives should make of the first American pope’s early papacy.
Kengor said the initial signals were genuinely positive. When Leo emerged onto the loggia on May 8th following his election, his demeanor and presentation stood in sharp contrast to his predecessor. He appeared measured and prepared, reading from a carefully composed statement drawing on Augustine and the words of the risen Christ rather than offering the kind of off-the-cuff remarks that characterized so much of the Francis papacy. When Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio met with him at his formal installation on May 19th, the meeting was described as friendly and collegial. Since then, however, Leo has spoken against the war in Iran with growing regularity, including a Palm Sunday homily in which he quoted Isaiah in a way that Kengor said was clearly intended to apply to the current conflict even without naming the Trump administration explicitly. He said it may only be a matter of time before the pope is more direct.
Kengor urged conservatives not to overreact. Popes pray for peace and speak against war, he said, and that is simply what the office does. The more relevant question for those concerned about the ideological direction of the papacy is what kind of pope Leo is likely to be on the full range of issues the church confronts, and there Kengor said the picture is considerably more reassuring than the Francis years. Leo took the name of Leo XIII, appeared on the loggia in full traditional papal garb including the mozzetta and stole that Francis had conspicuously abandoned, and has signaled through those gestures alone that the war on tradition that defined much of the previous papacy is effectively over. He headed the International Augustinian Order and is deeply versed in just war doctrine, which means his statements on the Iran campaign are coming from a place of genuine theological formation rather than reflexive pacifism.
On Leo’s broader theological profile, Kengor said the record available from his statements in the 2000s is consistently orthodox in the small-c conservative sense, opposing gay marriage, gender ideology, and abortion. He founded the pro-life club at Villanova in the late 1970s and attended some of the earliest March for Life events in Washington. He was also the only American cardinal appointed by Francis who was not a left-winger, which Kengor said speaks to the degree to which Francis systematically ideologized the American cardinalate in a way unprecedented in the history of the church, appointing figures like Cardinal Cupich of Chicago and Cardinal McElroy while bypassing more orthodox candidates. Leo’s election, which Kengor said was accomplished in just four ballots with 108 of 133 cardinal electors voting for him, drew praise from both liberal Jesuit Father James Martin and conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke, suggesting the college saw him as a figure capable of ending what Kengor described as the Francis chaos and restoring a more stable, measured tone to the papacy.
Proft raised the Palm Sunday incident in which Cardinal Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, was briefly blocked from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, an episode that generated significant commentary among American conservatives as potential evidence of Israeli hostility toward Catholic and Christian holy sites. Kengor said he does not read it that way. The Israeli government responded immediately, met with Vatican representatives the following day, and access to the church was restored. His read is that a security official, operating in a time of active conflict and heightened alert, may simply not have recognized the cardinal and was following orders in a chaotic environment. He noted that some on the American right are actively looking for reasons to criticize Israel at the moment and suggested the incident was being seized on for that purpose rather than examined on its actual merits.
The conversation closed on the question of whether Leo, having spent the majority of his priesthood outside the United States in Peru, will give sufficient attention to the state of the Catholic Church in America, which Proft argued requires special focus given that if the church loses its footing in the United States it will be difficult to sustain it anywhere else. Kengor said Leo’s universal outlook and his deep roots outside America may actually be assets for a pope trying to avoid being seen as a partisan figure in American politics. He noted that the United States has the second largest number of cardinals in the world behind only Italy, that Leo has two brothers living in America including one in Florida described as an enthusiastic Trump supporter with whom the pope speaks daily by phone, and that the gravitational pull of his home country on his attention is probably unavoidable regardless of his intentions. The replacement of Cardinal Dolan, Kengor said, with a figure known to be a sensible small-o orthodox Catholic is an early indicator that Leo intends to restore doctrinal seriousness to the American church without the ideological warfare that defined the Francis appointments.